How’s your campus’s student experience? There are many factors that play a role in student success, from course quality to the school’s location. One thing that is often overlooked, however, is customer service or as we say in education – student service. Premier service is a mainstay in creating an improved, new student experience.
Let’s dive in:
- Why does student experience matter?
- How to improve the student experience
- 7 education-specific service tools to improve the student experience
Why student experience matters
Research shows that when students experience a sense of belonging and support on campus and in the classroom, they’re more likely to persist through academic challenges and earn their degrees.
– The Student Experience Project1
To put it simply: student experience is the key to student retention. Here’s why:
Students today have unlimited choices when it comes to where they want to study. That’s why focusing on student experience is critical. This starts with fostering a healthy, vibrant community on any campus.
Happy students are more likely to show up to classes, participate in extracurricular clubs and activities, and contribute to their on- and 0ff-campus housing environments. And when students feel connected and supported, they stick around and re-enroll.
How to improve the student experience
Students come in all shapes and sizes, and with different needs. To provide a better student experience, it is important to understand what the needs of your students are and how they differ from one another. (Think differentiated instruction, but for customer service.) It also helps to know what your institution’s strengths and weaknesses are so that you can better serve your students.
Your students are your customers. Administrators can leverage customer service best practices to improve graduation rates through increased student satisfaction. Amazon is an expert in online transactions and customer service so let’s apply this same thinking to redefine the new student experience.
To accomplish this, you have to:
- Understand your students
- Understand your institution
- Map ways to use your institutional resources to address student needs
- Leverage technology to better connect with young people
To that final point, let’s look at some tech tools, all in one platform, that can help you reach students and customize the student service experience.
7 education-specific service tools to improve the student experience
RingCentral for Education is a communication platform specifically designed for schools and universities. RingCentral includes customer service tools that help with student enrollment, transcript requests, tuition payments, and more. School administrators can use RingCentral to simplify the day-to-day tasks of managing their institution and pave the way to a new student experience.
RingCentral for Education offers tools for students who need assistance with:
1. Enrollment
RingCentral for Education has partnered with public and private institutions to create an easy enrollment experience. When a student visits a site, RingCentral can guide them through setting up their account and getting the proper documentation needed to enroll. The service is free for students, which means it’s more likely that they will enroll in your institution.
2. Transcripts
RingCentral for Education allows you to request transcripts from any college or university in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand with just a few clicks. You can request transcripts for yourself or someone else, including your child, spouse, colleague, or friend. Best of all, this service is also free.
3. Tuition payments
Tuition Payments is a service that lets students pay their tuition bills through an online portal. The service takes all the hassle and uncertainty out of paying tuition bills by providing a secure, convenient payment system that allows students or parents to make payments right from their phone.
4. Online learning and virtual meetings
With this tool, you can create virtual classrooms for students who cannot attend in person or offer online courses available to all enrolled students.
Web conferencing can be used to create virtual classrooms for students or meeting areas for student activities for students who cannot attend in person. This is a real time-saver for busy educators. It also saves the student time and money on gas, parking, or other transportation costs.
5. Student help desk
This feature allows students to submit questions or concerns about their account directly from the mobile app or web portal. Students new to the university or in need of help with their account can quickly reach out to the Student Help Desk and get the answers they need. There is no need to wait for an email response or hope that someone will see your question. This way, students can stay up-to-date on all their university information and keep track of their grades.
6. Analytics
65% of respondents rated ‘using data to understand and improve the student experience’ as a top priority.
– EAB2
RingCentral for Education is a mobile app designed to help educators and administrators better understand their students’ needs and the student environment. The app provides insights into how students are feeling, what they are doing, how teachers can improve, as well as how the school can improve.
Robust analytics are used to understand data from student surveys, phone calls, emails, texts, and other sources and provide feedback through dashboards to help educators make changes in the classroom or school environment.
7. Feedback tools
Many types of feedback tools can be used to gather feedback from students. The most popular types are surveys and feedback forms. It is possible to use these tools differently depending on their purpose.
- Surveys are great for gathering feedback from many students and getting an overall grade from the entire class, or for gathering specific types of feedback about specific areas. Surveys can be anonymous or not, depending on their purpose.
- Feedback forms are excellent for small groups of students who want to get feedback on particular areas where they’re struggling. Feedback forms are also great because they allow you to gather information that is not relevant to every student’s experience so you can tailor additional support as needed.
RingCentral’s Contact Center Feedback Management tools can easily help you understand and craft a new student experience for each individual or implement overall strategies for general student population success.
Improve the student experience with RingCentral
RingCentral for Education provides a suite of customer service tools tailored to the needs of the education industry. These tools provide outstanding customer service and support, including phone, chat, email, and social media.
Our student help desk software is a great tool for educational institutions to use to provide students with 24/7 customer service. It also integrates with RingCentral MVP, which is an office communication and collaboration tool that teachers and staff members can use.
Try RingCentral for Education by requesting a free demo to see how it works for your school!
- https://studentexperienceproject.org/
- https://eab.com/insights/blogs/operations/measure-student-experience-ir/
Originally published Apr 26, 2023