Reflecting back, customer service was never considered in schools and was only emphasized in sectors like healthcare, agriculture, and construction. However, customer service for schools has changed dynamically.
Today, customer service in educational institutions plays a crucial role in shaping perceptions about how parents, teachers, and stakeholders think about your school.
Picture yourself entering a school for the first time as a parent, teacher, or visitor. The first impression you get either makes you feel welcomed or discouraged.
School customer service enhances parents’ engagement through answering questions and addressing concerns, making them believe your school is the choice for their children.
In this blog, you’ll learn about the essentials, examples, and strategies for improving customer service in schools.
What is customer service in schools?
Customer service in schools refers to the assistance provided to students, parents, and stakeholders to ensure a positive learning environment.
School customer service is about building and maintaining strong relationships with stakeholders, parents, tutors, and learners.
For students, some of the main ways to implement customer support in schools include:
- Timely and accurate responses to all customers’ concerns.
- Providing them with self-service options.
- Recognizing them for their achievements.
For parents, good customer service in schools involves:
- Giving them regular updates on their children’s academic performance.
- Timely response to questions on payroll, upcoming meetings or events, and school curriculum.
- Assuring them on the safety and well-being of their children.
Other customers such as teachers, board members, and donors also need excellent support from the school such as:
- Involving them in school activities like extracurricular activities, annual general meetings (AGM), and fundraisers.
- Providing reports on overall school performance.
- Ensuring timely payments like salaries, reimbursements, and software subscriptions.
- Providing teaching and learning resources.
The level of support experience for every individual in the education industry will determine how the school values, supports, and cares for them.
Benefits of customer service in educational institutions
Effective customer service in schools means solving issues for students, parents, and staff to guarantee educational success when they arise.
Let’s look at the key benefits of providing customer service in the education sector.
Creates a positive reputation
The reputation of a school is built on the success stories it creates and the care it shows for every member involved in the education sector be it teachers, parents, board members or staff.
Prioritize students’ success, provide effective communication, and celebrating students’ success drives a positive learning environment that will attract more learners.
What’s more, a parent who has good experience with your school will most likely recommend it to other parents, helping build the school’s reputation.
Builds trust between parents and school
Trust begins when parents feel they can rely on your school for their children’s needs.
Excellent and transparent communication when addressing issues and concerns helps parents believe that your school is concerned about their student’s education and well-being.
Therefore, parents will feel confident and engage positively because they can rely on your school to handle issues positively, keep your promises, and act in the best interest of their children.
Increases financial opportunities
More scholars means more funding. This means when your school enrolls more students, they will get more financial gains in terms of fees.
However, without the best support experience, some learners will churn, and new learners won’t join your school.
Good customer service also attracts more donors, contributions from Parent-Teacher Associations (PTA), and scholarships that make education more affordable. Reducing financial burden on families allows students to attend school without burden of tuition fees.
Take example LeBron James, the NBA star and TV personality, has been an advocate for education through his LeBron James Family Foundation. He contributed $41 million to send kids to college.
Enhances student achievement
According to Highereddive, four-year public institutions see the highest persistence and retention rates, with 86.4% of their new students returning to higher education for their second year and 78% electing to stay at the same college.
Customer service is the key to unlocking students’ potential and success. Ever sat down with your children and asked them what grades they scored or any academic challenges they are facing?
Students’ success relies on providing them with the right learning materials, guiding and supporting them with academic problems, giving them full attention, and providing timely feedback on their concerns. Meeting all these school customer service expectations, learners will feel cared for and motivated to pursue their academic goals.
Better conflict resolution
While conflict might seem like a negative experience, it also presents an opportunity for growth, success, and improvement in customer service in schools.
Managing conflict in schools lies in proactive communication, empathy, and problem solving ensuring that both parties are heard, respected, and satisfied with the outcome.
A sympathetic approach can help solve issues between teachers, parents, and students quickly and effectively.
Strategies for boosting customer support in education
Every school’s goal is to meet parents’ and students’ needs and foster a positive learning environment by improving their customer service experience.
Since students spend most of their time in school, it makes them feel loved, hence becoming their second home.
Below are some of the strategies of effective customer service in schools:
Effective communication and transparency
Good communication involves providing parents, learners, and staff with easily accessible information, and resources needed for them to excel.
Schools that regularly communicate with parents via letters, meetings, and digital platforms like email promote parents’ involvement in their children’s education.
For instance, a parent may call the school about a question concerning the student’s academic progress and needs feedback regarding the matter.
Social media provides real-time communication for schools by posting updates about school events, sharing emergency announcements on school portals, and answering queries.
Omnichannel customer service allows your stakeholders to choose suitable communication platforms and channels such as emails, live chat, phones, WhatsApp Messenger, social media, and text messages to streamline customer interactions.
Omnichannel communication allows quick and efficient responses to questions, for instance AI chatbots that answer questions on school websites or parent portals reduce the need for your staff to answer repetitive questions.
Ask for and collect feedback
For any school to have a successful support system behind it, feedback is the way to go.
Find out what your students, parents, and other stakeholders think of your support or the education system in general, and if they have any suggestions on how to do things better to ensure their success.
Conduct feedback through surveys, suggestion boxes, and focus groups, helps your staff address issues and better understand them.
For instance, you can send a survey question by asking parents how satisfied they are on their children’s progress or asking students if they feel supported in their studies.
When teachers listen to their students’ concerns and address them immediately, your school will prevent conflicts and misunderstandings, hence improve student-parent relationships.
Add self-serve option
The foundation of excellent customer service in schools is giving students and parents the ability to help themselves when needed.
Learn how a self-service platform allows learners and their families to access any information they need from your school without any assistance.
By offering a knowledge base, learners and their parents can find quick answers to their queries, explore education topics, and troubleshoot common problems like failed online fee payments.
According to K-12dive, 82% of parents were satisfied with the district’s customer service when they reached out to the school system.
Self-service tools such as parents’ portal, parents monitor their children’s academic progress or attendance at any time.
Regular training and skill development
The more your school invest in training, the better equipped your staff will be to foster positive relationships and handle any situation.
Consider training and developing methods such as onboarding bootcamp, seminars, e-learning, workshops, and community forum to ensure school support teams have the right knowledge and skills.
Regularly teach your team customer service skills such as communication skills, problem-solving, conflict resolution, and empathy that will assist them in handling complaints better.
Develop a resource library where staff can access frequently asked queries, troubleshooting guides and best practices which helps them resolve common issues quickly.
Provide 24/7 assistance
In education, immediate assistance is a necessity for supporting students and parents who may need help outside typical school hours.
Schools can utilize customer service tools such as live chat, self-service, omnichannel inbox, or AI Copilot help desk to guarantee parents and students get assistance from anywhere, at any time or any hour of the day, without having to wait for school opening-hours.
We can use a ticketing system to create and send automated canned responses whenever students or parents submit queries during off-hours to acknowledge receipt and provide alternative option to get help.
Leverage technology for efficiency
Learning without technology is like a car without wheels! Technology transforms both learning and teaching experience in the education industry. Schools can consider the following for better support experiences and productivity.
- Generate AI Copilot to answer common parent-student questions quickly, get AI-generated ideas, and translate messages to different languages.
- Implement help desk software for school customer service to easily track and manage all support issues.
- Use automation to send students and parents automated messages about attendance, school events, and school policies and upgrades.
- Use knowledge base software as a repository of information such as school policies, how-to articles and videos and FAQs. It provides teachers, parents, and students with a centralized way to find quick answers without direct assistance from the school. Access to information helps schools in reducing the number of support tickets and workload.
- Create dedicated customer self-service portals for parents to monitor their children’s progress and attendance, while allowing students to access their schedules, track their study hours, submit assignments, and more.
All these tools provides teachers, parents, and students with a centralization to find quick answers without direct assistance from the school.
Examples of excellent customer service in schools
Excellent customer service is crucial in schools because it creates a supportive, efficient, and responsive environment for learners. Here are some of the best examples of good customer service in schools:
California State University, Northridge’s Mobile App (CSUNMP)
With this mobile app, students can access dozens of features. They can ask any question and get instant feedback since it is a phone call service. Features of the mobile app include:
- Tuition and bill payment system
- Class enrolment from phone
- Social media integration
- Ask Matty- a chatbot that answers questions and solves problems
- Employee directorate for quick customer service outreach
- Student support resource
CSUNMP serves as the best knowledge base because it’s user friendly, convenient, and focuses on students’ success.
It combines real-time data, personalized features, easy access to academic information, and school services in one location.
Boston University Newsletter
Boston University Newsletter produces online and offline newsletters that keep customers up to date on the latest school development programs.
Boston Newspaper serves as a crucial tool to update students, staff, and faculty about the institution’s events, achievements, news, and developments.
The newsletter structure is flexible and can be modified to fit the specific interests of your target audience.
Kern High School District (KHSD), California
KHSD receives large numbers of questions across different departments and different support groups handle.
KHSD provides a high-quality education that prepares students for university, careers, and future life. Features of KHSD include:
- Academic programs
- Community engagement
- Technology and facilities
- Extracurricular activities
KHSD is committed to improving students’ academic outcomes through expanding colleges, improving student achievement, and promoting equality.
The School District Philadelphia’s Knowledge Base(SDPKB)
The School District Philadelphia has the perfect knowledge base for school customer service that ensures consistency with your customer support. Features of SDPKB include:
- Technology support
- Parent and community engagement
- Student performance and data analysis
It supports efficient communication, improves engagement with parents and students, and helps your staff provide accurate responses.
Achieving success with effective customer service in schools
Customer service in school is about creating a positive and conducive environment that enhances educational experience and creates engagement among students, parents, and staff.
Customer support in education strengthens community relationships, enhances students’ success, and creates a good working environment for learners.
When you focus on providing school customer service, your school will create a strong bond and partnership with families, improve student outcomes, and build a positive school culture that benefits everyone involved.
You can book a live demo to see how BoldDesk allows your schools to solve their issues, reduce workloads, and track the progress of resolution. You should try a 15-day free trial to test these features for yourself. Contact us if you have any questions or suggestions.
I hope this article is helpful! Feel free to leave a comment in the section below.
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