Need for Omni Channel – Education

Engagement with existing or prospective students, has been one of the key issues with which educational institutes have been grappling from long time now. This becomes even more challenging in current scenario when students/institute staff have limited face to face interactions. Even for a small query, students would have to either email or call and then wait for the concerned person to get back with required details.

A simple example could be of a prospective student who is trying to learn more about school’s admission process. When he visits the website, it would be far easier and convenient for him to be able to chat with someone about a specific query or easily access documents related to his question, without having to fill a form and then wait for someone to contact you via email. This helps in improving efficiency and also draws a higher level of engagement with the prospect.

With current technological advancements, institutions which are able to provide best end user support/services experiences are having a clear advantage over their peers. With advance technology at their hands, end users want to be able to get their issues/queries resolved using the easiest communication modes available to them like email, messages, social platforms etc. While this makes life easier for the end user, it becomes a nightmare for the support team to be able to track the same user across different modes of communication and then work on their request with a 360-degree holistic view.

Well, this is where Omni-channel, one of the product offerings from Salesforce, comes into picture which helps customers to connect seamlessly with the support and service staffs, through multiple channels, platforms etc. without any hassles. At the same time, support agents have immediate access to a holistic picture of the user they are about to help.

While these strategies have already shown positive results in industries like e-commerce, hospitality etc., application of same concepts to education systems has been slower process, as most of the schools still rely heavily of email as mode of communication.

With Omni-channel implemented,

• Firstly, this will increase the engagement level with prospective students to a much higher level as they will have multiple platforms to be able to reach out for any queries/support and thus increasing the chances of conversion.
• Secondly, it will also help existing students with their queries through standard support process or through publishing helpful articles which students can use as a self-serve platform. Third, it helps the support agents to access the 360-degree view of the user and their concerns or past interactions through multiple platforms before providing an optimal resolution.
• At last, from an institution point of view, it helps in streamlining the whole support process where you can route all kind of queries through one common platform, monitor the SLAs/resolution times, and provide better support and experience to your end users through a holistic approach.