The Consumption Problem Nobody Likes to Talk About
In the corporate language training world, regardless of whether you are a service provider, a freelance trainer, or running your own bespoke training programs, you will often have to accept a business model where you only get paid when lessons are delivered. A contract is signed and sealed, but then the students are no-show, or they take lessons intermittently, so those unused lessons are never billed.
This does seem fair to many who would say: Surely learners should only pay for what they consume? But in practice, it creates a big accounting problem. Companies must carry the cost of acquiring, onboarding, and supporting learners who may never fully engage. If they have too many inactive learners, they will lose some of the forecasted revenue that they were relying on to pay salaries. This also has a knock-on effect on the trainers, who will see their training schedules thin out.
Language schools or training providers working with corporate clients usually sell large training packages. These could sometimes be hundreds of hours across an entire workforce. The catch is that usage will be uneven, and high engagement rates are rare. Even strong providers may see only 60–70% of students actively consuming lessons. The Inactive learners are a hidden liability as they represent a great deal of lost opportunity. They look good on paper during the sales cycle, but never become revenue. In this case cash flow becomes unpredictable. A provider may “sell” 1,000 hours, but if only 600 are ever used, the profit margins collapse. This will create a headache when real income does not match the sales, and the pipeline only yields 60% of the projected income.
For freelance trainers, the problem is more personal. The dreaded no-shows mean no pay, and no money to pay rent and bills. Many freelancers in the industry can only invoice after a lesson is completed, so a week of cancellations can wipe out their income. Of course, long-term commitments are not always sustainable. Even when a learner buys packages of 10 or 20 lessons, life gets in the way, and they will have to reschedule half of the lessons. In addition to that, chasing students and rescheduling often takes energy and increases the administrative side of the job. So, just as language schools have problems, freelancers end up living with extreme income volatility because they can’t rely on consistent consumption. They will often blame the language school, but in reality, the problem is a symptom of low student engagement.
Scaling up also becomes very difficult for a smaller language training company because, without predictable consumption, it’s almost impossible to plan income and hire staff. The issue is keeping learners active once they’ve signed up, and maintaining high engagement rates. This is the all-important KPI that has to be monitored frequently. Every inactive student represents not just lost revenue, but also wasted time, admin cost, and onboarding effort. The hardest part is that inactivity often creeps in slowly: a student starts enthusiastically, then skips a few classes, and before long, they disappear completely.
One way to tackle low engagement is through strong onboarding procedures:
- Make sure students book their first lesson as soon as they enroll.
- Give them a simple, visible roadmap of what they’ll cover in the first month.
- Creating personalised client support helps build accountability early.
Another way is to give students gentle nudges to encourage them to be more accountable for their learning. If an active student has not taken a lesson for a long time, they enter the motivation risk zone. In other words, if a student hasn’t booked a lesson for 30 days, reach out with a friendly email. Create different categories of students: active students, at-risk students, and inactive students. Decide on what measures are necessary to retain or re-engage these groups. Act early to stop the rot before it sets in.
It is also essential to write to students soon after onboarding to encourage them to take the first step. This might seem easy to us, but it is a big deal for students who have not been in a language class since school. After onboarding, make sure that the client has an appointment with a trainer for their first lesson.
While reliable engagement figures are hard to come by, most language training businesses probably only achieve a consumption rate of 60-70%. A consumption rate of 75% is realistic with excellent onboarding and engagement tactics. Hitting 80% is probably only possible in very controlled corporate programs with very strict reporting, comprehensive onboarding campaigns, and possibly with the client’s line manager involved. However, going higher will require that the training is considered compulsory at the client company, and is tied to employee performance reviews. In other words, you need to introduce punishments like “workers have to pay for courses they do not use” if you want to get to this level of engagement. That is likely to be a step too far for most client companies.
Obviously, the best way for the language industry to fix this consumption problem is by shifting to subscription-based, blended models with an element of digital self-paced learning. Learners pay a flat fee for access to digital resources plus a fixed number of trainer-led lessons that must be consumed within a predefined period, like a year. This has clear advantages:
- Revenue is predictable
- Learners self-manage
- Engagement is digitally monitored
However, subscriptions usually only work if there’s a strong digital component. The main issue with an exclusively trainer-led offering is that the subscription model is hard to apply without a strong, engaging, gamified platform with AI-assisted features. In most cases, the best solution is to work with partner companies that can provide such services without having to make huge investments in innovation.
In summary, consumption rates are the elephant in the room for anyone in the language training business. Schools lose revenue on inactive students. Freelancers lose income to no-shows. Independent trainers lose momentum when clients drift away. Teaching languages is not just about motivating students to learn; it is also about making them take ownership of the learning process, be more accountable for their own learning, and take responsibility for using the wonderful training investment they have been offered.
Image by Lukas Bieri from Pixabay
No responses yet