Preloader
Customer Experience in the Education Industry

How to Effectively Improve Customer Experience in the Education Industry

Ritam Chatterjee

13 March 2024

Education sector is not having a typical agent-customer relationship. However, there is a lot of importance of the customer service skills at the time of interacting with students or parents. A study conducted about the same has revealed that the experience of the students has a major role to play in the outcome of the success of the students. It has also been found out that an effective communication helps in the reduction of rate of dropout of students in the first year of their admission.

This is because without effective and timely communication, the students have some mistaken expectations resulting in the increase of dropout rates. Thus, it is clear that the students can benefit with the access to information along with effective communication with the educational institutions. A better student experience will not only make the students happier but also much more productive, which in turn leads to the betterment of the rankings of the educational institution in the time to come. Thus, the educational sector should be focusing on ways of improving the experience of the customers. So, here is how to improve customer experience in education business.

Making the Decisions with Focus on the Service

Unlike other industries, education business has a bigger purpose to serve for the betterment of society by developing educated citizen. The pursuit of education is basically a very worthy goal. Here referring to the students as customers, the aim of education business is not just about serving the customers but to mould them into responsible citizens and scholars. This is exactly where the difference lies between serving customers in other businesses and education business. So, at the time of planning to provide better customer experience in education business, it is of immense importance to make all the decisions by keeping service in mind. For effectively delivering a seamless experience to the customers in this industry and add value it is extremely important to follow the golden rules of service.

Content:

  1. Being Responsive
  2. Being Available
  3. Being Service Oriented

- Being Responsive

The educational institutions happen to be a quite stressful environment for many particularly the students since they have to undergo several periods of high stress throughout. Thus, the reduction of stress of the students can necessarily create a better experience for them in this regard. So, it is of great importance from the point of view of the educational institutions to always be responsive to the students by promptly replying to all queries in an efficient manner in each of the aspects which ensures a stress free environment for the students. Apart from the students, the parents, teachers and others associated with the institution should get their queries resolved quite effectively, which ensures an overall good customer experience in education. The queries can be resolved by deploying several best practices of industry like introducing Self-service portal or Chatbots. The students should be able to easily access these from the convenience of their laptop or mobile apps.  Timely response and update is very critical because of the dynamic nature of education institutions and multiple courses and activities students are enrolled in. School Management Information System or similar systems should be integrated with proper communication system so that students and parents are notified with regular and timely update. We had done an effective communication management with Amity university where our telephony system helped the students to have an easy access for all queries and they are notified on regular basis. 


The case study of Amity University is available here  


- Being Available

Availability is a matter of immense importance in providing a better customer experience in the education business. The access to the right information by the right people that too at the right time is extremely critical for the purpose of providing a great customer experience. The information should be available in such a manner that everyone should clearly know about the information and where it can be easily found. This availability of information provides a very good customer experience in education business. The educational institutions should make sure that it is very easy to connect to any of the staffs or admin members at any point of time when they need it, so that they are able to get all sorts of help at all the time. A self service portal with ticketing / incidence management system enables students to easily access information and raise tickets for any issues which can be efficiently tracked.

- Being Service Oriented

Ultimately, the education business should aim at being service oriented in each and every approach. Providing a great customer experience in this regard means giving the stakeholders exactly what they are looking forward to. There is actually no other better way to know exactly what they require than asking for the feedback. It would undoubtedly be a very good idea to ask the customers (students as well as parents) as to what would they need in order to gain a better experience. Now, steps should be taken as per the feedback thereby enhancing the customer experience in education significantly. While it is very conventional to seek feedback if the students and parents are viewed as customers but usually in education institution the approach is not the same.

Finally, it is to be always kept in mind that the objective of customer service is to provide a better customer experience in the long run. So, it is essential to choose the right set of tools along with their appropriate implementation in the education business for effectively achieving the same.

Conclusion

Education institution is a backbone of a better society. So, it is imperative that the golden rules of customer service should be applied to education business as well.  Digital transformation and service oriented behaviour by all staffs are essential to build the much desired student experience. This service oriented environment will enable to create a happier society.

 

Subscribe to our Newsletter.

Recent Blogs

Subscribe to our blog post