You never get a second chance to make a good first impression
It’s the critical moment: that first tangible interaction where a student prospect reaches out to enquire about your institution. How well you respond and manage enquiries can make a significant difference to your conversion rate. Yet truly understanding your performance in the context of the market has always been hard. Until now.
The Enquiry Experience Tracker (EET) is a global syndicated research program that delivers an objective assessment of how well you’re doing. It’s from the student perspective, easy to learn from and very actionable. The research focuses on international and domestic students in alternating years.
Our student mystery shoppers pose as prospects and place enquiries through your key channels and analyse the responses. We mystery shop using a range of personas and enquiry channels.
Our experts score and benchmark the experience against other universities and colleges worldwide so you can understand your performance against local competitors and global peers.
Our scoring model, developed in partnership with UniQuest, measures a range of different data points to provide a holistic evaluation of the enquiry experience.
In your personalised report, you’ll be assessed against 51 criteria, including findability, responsiveness, clarity, personalisation and sentiment. Then you’ll receive an Enquiry Experience Score, representing the average rating from each mystery shopper.
The Enquiry Experience Tracker is a must-have for any data-driven student recruitment team. It’s a powerful tool to help you fine-tune your methods and your team’s performance in the vital window where student interest gives way to action.
View the results of the 2025 international students research >
Watch the video to know more about the research and how it works.
Key benefits
Understand how you’re
meeting prospective student needs
See where you perform
against competitors
Fine-tune your
competitive advantages
Identify gaps in
your performance
Inform targeted
resourcing and investment
Gain confidence
through objective data
How it works
1
March-April
Registration deadline and institution questionnaire
2
April-June
Mystery shopping fieldwork
3
July-August
Analysis and results preview
4
September-October
Report delivery and release of the global results
Mystery shopping
We employ real students as mystery shoppers. They place study enquiries to each institution, using key channels like social media, email and live chat.
Every year we create a set of relevant personas for each country or region. Mystery shoppers take on these identities and ask about courses.
They also ask questions about common topics such as career outcomes, course structure, admissions requirements and processes, student life, fees, accommodation and scholarships.
The research involves up to 24 mystery shopping enquiries to each institution (six personas each with four enquiries).
Below are the possible domestic student personas and channels for the 2026 mystery shopping.
Join an information and co-design session in November to share your input and shape the research.
Scoring and benchmarking
Our benchmarking reports help you understand your performance relative to local and global competitors’.
You’ll also be compared with our standard of excellence – a measure informed by our expertise in student communication and insights from UniQuest’s conversion and student satisfaction data.
Evaluation criteria include channel availability, responsiveness, communication quality, follow-up and impact.
What can you expect?
You’ll receive a detailed, fully documented and personalised report with benchmarking, analysis and recommendations for improvement.
The final report and write-up was the most useful I’ve received in 12 years of working with multiple consultancies.
These guys are best in class right now. Clear comms, frequent updates, cultural sensitivity. They’re the bee’s knees in education consultancy.
The Edified team are just a delight to work with: flexible, knowledgeable and deliver great outputs.
We found the Enquiry Experience Tracker exceptionally useful to identify where we could and should do better! We are making alterations to our enquiry streams and processes on the basis of this information.
Enquiry Experience Tracker provides valuable insights to the service you give international students and to better understand how your channels are performing to meet their needs.
EET helped us monitor and measure the level of service our institutions were providing to prospective students. It was an excellent way of making what can be a clumsy exercise, professional and seamless.
Join the 2026 Enquiry Experience Tracker
The Enquiry Experience Tracker is a must-have for any data-driven student recruitment team.
Quantify how well your university delivers against key student engagement standards, and how your performance compares to your competitors’.
You’ll be part of the mystery shopping and receive a personalised benchmarked report to support your student recruitment strategies.
Participation is simple and easy
- Register your institution
- Complete a short questionnaire
- Edified conducts fieldwork and evaluation
- Edified sends you a final report
The 2026 research is open to higher education institutions in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. Register now.
Sign up before 31 December 2025 to get a 10% earlybird discount. Or sign up for two years and save more.
Registration options
Select your region
Essentials
A$ 5,950
Includes:
- 6 enquiries
- Personalised report
Standard
A$ 8,950
Includes:
- 18 enquiries
- Personalised report
- Presentation of results
Premium
A$ 11,950
Includes:
- 24 enquiries
- Personalised report
- Mystery shopping three competitors of choice
- Anonymised benchmarking against your competitor set
- A data sheet with ratings for each enquiry
- Presentation of results
Early bird discount
Sign up on or before 31 December 2025 and get a 10% discount.
Two-year lock in discount:
2026 (domestic) +
2027 (international)
Essentials – A$ 5,250/year
Standard – A$ 7,950/year
Premium – A$ 10,550/year
Group discount
Special rates for groups of 6+ institutions.
Please note: discounts can't be combined.
Essentials
C$ 5,950
Includes:
- 6 enquiries
- Personalised report
Standard
C$ 8,950
Includes:
- 18 enquiries
- Personalised report
- Presentation of results
Premium
C$ 11,950
Includes:
- 24 enquiries
- Personalised report
- Mystery shopping three competitors of choice
- Anonymised benchmarking against your competitor set
- A data sheet with ratings for each enquiry
- Presentation of results
Early bird discount
Sign up on or before 31 December 2025 and get a 10% discount.
Two-year lock in discount:
2026 (domestic) +
2027 (international)
Essentials – C$ 5,250/year
Standard – C$ 7,950/year
Premium – C$ 10,550/year
Group discount
Special rates for groups of 6+ institutions.
Please note: discounts can't be combined.
Essentials
£ 2,950
Includes:
- 6 enquiries
- Personalised report
Standard
£ 4,450
Includes:
- 18 enquiries
- Personalised report
- Presentation of results
Premium
£ 5,950
Includes:
- 24 enquiries
- Personalised report
- Mystery shopping three competitors of choice
- Anonymised benchmarking against your competitor set
- A data sheet with ratings for each enquiry
- Presentation of results
Early bird discount
Sign up on or before 31 December 2025 and get a 10% discount.
Two-year lock in discount:
2026 (domestic) +
2027 (international)
Essentials – £ 2,550/year
Standard – £ 3,750/year
Premium – £ 4,950/year
Group discount
Special rates for groups of 6+ institutions.
Please note: discounts can't be combined.
Register for the 2026 Enquiry Experience Tracker
Registrations are open till 31 March 2026. Complete the form to join the 2026 domestic students research.
An earlybird discount is available for sign-ups still 31 December 2025.
To see the global results from the 2025 international students research, visit our results page.
For any questions, please get in touch at eet@edified.com.au.
Insights
Now available: The 2025 Enquiry Experience Tracker Global Report
Discover insights from this year's international student mystery shopping and the global and regional benchmarks.
9 Essentials for a successful student enquiries and sales function
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