The importance of customer service in higher education has never been clearer. Great customer service in higher education means happier and more productive students. It also increases customer satisfaction, loyalty and means positive referrals are more likely.

However, students are increasingly expecting a digitally-led, mobile-first, personalised experience from universities. As a consequence, universities need to rethink their approach to communicating and engaging with prospective and current students.

Many higher education organisations are still limiting themselves with legacy technology and telephony infrastructure. To meet student expectations, universities and colleges need to replace them with new systems that drive digital efficiencies and deliver a seamless, integrated and quality student and staff experience.

Rising parent and student expectations

Many parents can be impatient when it comes to their child’s education and demand quick answers. The same can be true of students – any delays can ramp up their dissatisfaction, so there’s an added pressure on institutions to move quickly and deliver the right information when parents and students reach out.

However, the past couple of academic years have been amongst the most difficult in the modern history of the higher education sector for ensuring a consistent and high quality student experience.

This was borne out by the record 2,763 appeals received by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator last year. The appeals were made by students who were dissatisfied at the way their universities had handled their complaints (1).

More than a thousand of these were related to the effects of campus Covid measures and over a quarter of appeals were upheld or deemed to be justified by the watchdog.

Students on design, creative and performing arts courses were among those most directly affected, according to the OIA, raising issues such as access to equipment and studio space or lost opportunities to exhibit work.

Streamlining conversations

Implementing customer service software like customer relationship management (CRM) platforms can help. CRM systems allow organisations to funnel the requests of students and parents from various channels, like email, phone and social media into a single location.

This streamlines all the conversations under one platform, helping teams connect with students and their parents via their preferred channel and resolve issues faster. Integrating all channels and providing the best user experience are the key benefits of omnichannel marketing.

Answers from the cloud

There are also cloud-based contact services that allow universities to deliver a much smoother customer journey. These systems offer an integrated student and staff experience that’s easy to use and much more efficient than traditional methods. Not only can these digital enhancements improve service, but they can also reduce the cost to serve, increase revenue, and drive scale.

They allow customers to self-serve, while giving customer service teams a holistic view on how people are engaging. The technology opens up smarter benefits too, like real-time transcription, sentiment analysis and machine learning conversation classification that help organisations sort queries into specific categories.

Institutions can also make good use of automation, chat bots and FAQs to resolve those everyday customer queries before they turn into something bigger than they need to be. Then it’s just a case of making sure those conversations that still need a human touch are woven into that newly digitised customer journey

Making institutions fit for today’s world

For students, simple and timely access to personalised information across multiple channels, with a clear focus on the moments that matter, will increase engagement and satisfaction.

In this rapidly changing digital world, the use of CRM systems and cloud technology can help transform higher education institutions for the better and deliver a seamless and effective experience for students, parents and staff.

Published date: 18th May 2022

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