More Ways to Help Students over the Winter Break
The Autumn Term is coming to an end with both students and staff looking forward to the festive break. Many students return home for the holidays but for some, their studying continues with their Semester 1 Assessments approaching.
Whilst at home students may need to get in contact with the university to find our when the campus will be is closed, discuss upcoming changes to their timetables or anything regarding their imminent assessments.
Over the holidays universities will be operating with skeleton staff, therefore the most efficient and cost effective method of handling these student enquiries is via live chat for website.
The instant communication channel allows students to quickly get their questions answered by a representative via text based messages in real time. They are satisfied as they don’t need to spend time on hold whilst being transferred from the switch board to the specific department or have to wait a lengthy time for an email reply.
Solve Issues Easily with Live Chat for Website
One of Click4Assistance’s support engineers, who holds a First Class Hons degree in BSc Computing from the University of East London, commented, “live chat would have been very useful for contacting the university, especially at the time when the establishment majorly messed up our timetable schedules. They used to release it online via our online student portal; however, some were blank or had the wrong classes for a month! We had to go to the schools helpdesks to ask them individually.”
With live chat for website, representatives would be able to handle multiple enquiries at any one time. A user could be logged in and available to ensure their chat service is online, as they get busier and quieter other users can log in and out as necessary, allowing universities to scale their staff resources, and handle situations like incorrect schedules more efficiently.
Why Students Prefer Text Based Communication Channels
Independent research has shown young adults between the age of 16 and 25 prefer to communicate via text-based messages rather than traditional channels,. If they are not sure who they need to contact it is a much quicker experience to be transferred between representatives in different departments via live chat than it is by telephone.
To speed up handling enquiries, representatives have access to a library of predefined replies that have already been configured; they can edit the reply before sending to the visitor, speeding up their response rate whilst still achieving high levels of accuracy.
Another way to accelerate response times is with the use of ghost text. Representatives can view what the visitor is typing in real time. This allows them to pre-empt the enquiry and compose a response, however they shouldn’t actually type or send a message until the visitor has sent their completed message through, as they could amend what they are saying or become uncomfortable if an operator has already answered their question before they have sent it.
Whilst enquiring via the telephone, it can be hard to explain what the student is exactly looking at, whether this is on the website or a form they have to complete, emailing makes it easy to include an attachment that will speed up the interaction.
Within chat users and students are able to transfer any documentation to one another using file transfer, this reduces having to send follow up emails or postage costs. Representatives can also direct the visitor to any webpage by using auto navigation, helping signpost the student to any information relating to their enquiry that’s already available.
Click4Assistance has been supplying live chat for websites for over 10 years, many UK universities are turning to live chat to increase engagement with students and make it easier for them to contact the organisation. To book your free demonstration of the solution, contact our education co-ordinator on 01268 524628 or email theteam@click4assistance.co.uk.
