ICEF and Australia’s PIER, two companies which collaborate on the delivery of ICEF’s various agent training courses, have announced a new app which allows users to find any qualified education counsellor based on a GPS location tool.
The Qualified Education Agent (QEA) app is aimed at sales and marketing professionals in the industry who will be able to use the app to find qualified education agency professionals on any business trip and navigate to an agency’s office.
“Why not have the location and contact of every reputable agent at your finger-tips?”
The app currently lists 5,000 qualified and trained agents, but Chris Evason, managing director of marketing intelligence and software development company PIER – which also delivers Australia’s Education Agent Training Course – said the number is set to grow.
Speaking with The PIE News, he explained that there are another 20,000 agent professionals who are registered for the course but have not yet passed the test or paid to be qualified.
“Over the next few months, we will be going out to agencies and making it clear to them they’re just a simple step away from being part of this resource for the industry,” he said.
Both Evason and Markus Badde, CEO of ICEF, believe the free app will become widely used.
“This is a ground-breaking app that should be on every education professional’s phone,” said Badde. “If you work for an institution, why not have the location and contact of every reputable agent at your fingertips?”
The app is also intended to help students search for qualified agents close to their current location, and designate which country’s qualification is preferred out of the main student destination countries: Australia, the US, Canada, and the UK.
Evason remarked, “We think that both students and institutions want instant mobile access to information about quality agent services.”
ICEF collaborates with PIER to deliver its own ICEF Agent Training Course, as well as a version for Chinese agents in partnership with BOSSA.
It has also developed a course focused on agents selling programmes in the US (USATC) and a Canada Course for Education Agents for professionals focused on working with Canadian programmes.
The app can be downloaded from the app store for both Android and iPhone operating systems.
