Insights
The education sector is one of many sectors that has become adversely affected due to COVID-19 pandemic. Student, parents and the entire community is searching for answers to the questions, and many unknowns about virtually every aspect of the student life, from student housing to financial aid, to commencement, to career placement programs, and much more. No one has been prepared for a pandemic like COVID-19, thus everything is being planned now, simultaneously, as and when the universities are receiving guideline from the Federal Govt. Therefore, Universities need to be prepared at-all-times. Even after it ends, this crisis will serve as the best practice use case example for college and universities to manage other short-lived crisis communications.
AI chatbots support personalized & seamless communication in Higher Education
Communication and information serves as a means of comfort to the students throughout the college tenures and a lot of information is required, both, to instruct and comfort parents/ students and AI chatbots can serve as an excellent, reliable & real-time distribution channel for information. Today, implementing AI chatbots is a smart move for any university that wishes to yield long term benefits like effectively handle the sheer volume of questions from students and their parents while making sure the distributed information is consistent, factual, and sets an effective tone. Additionally, for convenience, chatbots are available to supply information 24/7. Students can use chatbots to quickly connect with their advisors, ask questions about their schedules, major subjects, course loads, career and get course recommendations, anytime of the day.
Despite being a preferred method of communication, problem with emails is that sometimes they are easily lost and forgotten, especially in the events of crisis, enrollments, distribution of financial aid etc. where overwhelming volume of messages are received from people. However, Chatbots are extremely capable of answering common questions, which can easily account for up to 45 percent of the total inquiry volume, and they can also direct users to key communication resources that would otherwise be challenging to compile. Chatbots help colleges and universities keep information accessible and provides up-to-date, personalized responses to each person’s query. When the information is extremely urgent or a significant change has taken place, AI chatbots can send push notifications to deliver critical updated instantly.
Earn endless financial benefits with AI Chatbots
Colleges and universities may find it challenging to help relieve cost pressures while improving customer service to meet the needs of their students. The cost of a group of human representatives responding to inquiries across all the departments can be considerably high and replying to the same query again and again, connecting to varied departments and long call hold times can be a tedious. Statistics state that around 38 percent of the questions posed to one department belong to the domain of another and the lack of connection can force students to enter a maddening search maze. AI chatbots simplify this process by gathering and tying required information from all the different departments together to improve experiences and save time. With AI chatbot’s capability to provide instant responses and answers, in case of emergencies, in case of addressing complex issues or if the information is not well organized, the cost of fielding questions can be reduced significantly.
That does not mean in any way that Chatbots will replace the human team members responsible for assisting students and their parents. As per Salesforce reports, ‘64% of agents who use chatbots are free to spend their time solving more difficult and complex problems whereas only 50% of agents without chatbots have the same luxury.’
Adopt an AI Chatbot today!
Universities will not only benefit by significantly reducing the costs of providing the required information, but the experience of acquiring this information is also much easier and much less frustrating with AI Chatbots.