GoalQuest, Inc., a software company providing automated, intelligence-based enrollment management tools to the education market, today announced the formation of CallQuest. The centerpiece of the new corporate division is a professional calling center whose efforts will further advance the company's student, prospect, alumni and parent communication services.

The formation of CallQuest marks the latest expansion of GoalQuest's suite of proprietary Web-based tools, used by top colleges and universities for recruiting prospects, increasing enrollment yield, and for engaging and developing parents, alumni and other audiences.

CallQuest combines and enhances three existing product offerings: E-mail Procurement, Impact Calling and the Virtual Recruiting Center (VRC).

The E-mail Procurement arm of CallQuest obtains e-mail addresses of a desired audience (parents of freshmen, for example). The service also records vital demographic and qualitative data during its calls-information that clients can use to form new relationships with their constituents and re-vitalize existing ones. Procured e-mail addresses are used to register respondents for a GoalQuest Web-based program.

Impact Calling helps institutions such as universities better gauge and respond to student, alumni or parent satisfaction with campus services and resources. Impact Calls include a series of engaging opinion questions that encourage feedback on a range of topics and issues. The Student Impact Calling (SIC) service, for example, measures student concerns-including very specific academic issues that may impact achievement and continuance in school.

Other program versions include Parent Impact Calling (PIC) and Alumni Impact Calling (AIC), services that consolidate feedback on campus initiatives and quality of service, while laying the groundwork for further follow-up, such as school-to-parent communication programs and fundraising efforts.

The Virtual Recruiting Center unit of CallQuest offers a cost-effective method of providing admissions and enrollment management personnel with rich, action-oriented data. The Center helps clients identify prospects with desired characteristics, such as students with high standardized test scores or GPAs, athletic standouts, historically underrepresented students, prospects from out of state and adult learners.

VRC further segments prospects by identifying those who have a low or high probability of submitting an application and/or enrolling and, importantly, those still on-the-fence in their consideration-prospects likely to be influenced by additional recruitment and yield efforts.

All of the CallQuest services are carefully customized. Calls are made on behalf of clients by a team of professional callers trained in the unique services, goals and common issues of each institution. To date, CallQuest programs have shown significant improvements in a number of key metrics, including student retention, parent satisfaction, application yield, admission selectivity and alumni development.

"Thanks to the service-oriented nature of our phone calls, our calls are very well received," said Barbara Yang, Director of Call Center Operations. "Students, parents and alumni are very happy to be given the opportunity to provide feedback to the university. During our recruiting efforts, many respondents have said that, had they received our calls earlier, they would have given more careful consideration to the school on behalf of which we were calling. The impact of a personal call is tremendous."

GoalQuest recently deployed Impact Calling campaigns for University of Southern Indiana freshmen and their parents. The PIC and SIC programs are in addition to the Web-based retention and parent programs which USI has been using since September. "Impact Calling has been exceptionally successful for USI," said Dr. Robert Parrent, the University's Vice President for Student Affairs. "It has provided students with a unique opportunity to reach out, while informing parents about the freshman experience so that they in turn can support their students' success. Moreover, the reporting that has come out of the CallQuest initiative has allowed our staff and faculty to reach out and address needs and concerns on a real-time basis."

About GoalQuest
GoalQuest, Inc. is a New York City-based software company specializing in innovative solutions for the education market. Since its inception in 2000, GoalQuest's proprietary software tools have assisted colleges and universities across the country in their recruiting, enrollment yield, retention, parent and alumni communication efforts. GoalQuest's proprietary Enrolligence™ index delivers real-time engagement data to schools, providing them with unprecedented communication intelligence for more informed decisions. For additional information about GoalQuest, please visit the company's Web site at http://www.goalquest.com.