Solve all your students’ questions quickly and effectively
When students have questions they expect immediate answers, and with WhatsApp you can help them
CONTEXT
Course content.
Administrative process before and during the classes.
Obtaining the certificates.
And more.
Solving the questions effectively is important to offer quality experiences, earn their trust, and even gain their loyalty.
If you solve their questions and problems efficiently, they will feel heard. Therefore, it will be more likely that they come back to your institution or that they recommend you to friends and family.
The problem
To solve these questions you make available several channels:
- Phone
One of the most used channels for customer support is phone attention. However, if you have few agents and many calls, the waiting times will be long. Additionally, repetitive questions take time that agents could use to solve more complex problems.
On the other hand, if you have students abroad, a phone call can be expensive.
Another channel that companies usually use to solve questions is e-mail. Although this is a communication channel that we use, it is increasingly abandoned.
The main disadvantage of e-mail is that it is not a direct channel. When you send a message you are not sure whether they will read it and you don’t know when they are going to answer.
In addition, if the user has many questions, one answer may depend on the previous one, so communication can be inefficient.
- Contact form
Although many companies use it and can be efficient, the truth is that completing a form on the webpage is an indirect and one-way communication.
Through the form, they have to wait for your answer without knowing if or when you’ll do it.
- FAQs section
A FAQs section on your website is a useful way to provide immediate answers. However, not everyone bothers to go to that section and look if their answer is there.
For these reasons, you need an immediate, direct, and efficient answer.
THE SOLUTION
- It’s a direct communication channel.
- It’s naturally conversational.
- Users can answer when it suits them best.
- You can create automations.
- It’s immediate and personal.
- It’s available 24/7.
With WhatsApp waiting times are shorter and if the users need to wait for an answer they can do it without interrupting their day. Of course, we recommend you answer in the shortest time possible.
Additionally, you can create chatbots and automatic answers they will help the users without the need for human intervention.
Let’s see some examples of how you can solve users’ and students’ questions.
Some examples
- Personal and direct conversations
WhatsApp’s live chat is an excellent channel to solve the most complex questions.
A person can ask whatever they want and a live agent can answer and talk with the user as if they were talking to a friend.
The multi-agent option of WhatsApp Cloud API, allows several agents to connect to the conversation. This way, if different agents need to intervene, they will be able to do it seamlessly.
Also, with WhatsApp Cloud API, you can send and receive multimedia elements, such as PDFs, images, and videos to have a better context of the student’s problem and give them answers.
- Immediate attention 24/7
Chatbots are useful virtual tools to answer frequently asked questions automatically and immediately.
You can create a chatbot that recognizes keywords or by categories where the user can choose what they need by using buttons.
This is one of the best tools to effectively answer your students’ questions. If they need help from a human, they will be able to ask for an agent with the touch of a button.
- Updates with multimedia elements
Push notifications can be a useful tool to answer questions from students and prospects.
A conversation flow can start with a message where a student tells you about a problem that needs more time to solve.
Answer them through WhatsApp is easy when you have it integrated with your system. The 24h window allows you to send all the messages you need to manage the query.
Once your agents have the solution, and if the 24h window is over, you can re-open the conversation with a push notification and send a document with the information the user requested. Or even a video tutorial.
Good practices
Let’s see some good practices that you need to keep in mind when using WhatsApp for student service.
WhatsApp is an asynchronous channel: which means that your students can answer when they want. However, you must answer quickly to meet their expectations (and exceed them).
Keep it simple: keep in mind that WhatsApp is dynamic and conversational, so don’t make your messages too long or complicated.
If you create a FAQs chatbot: make sure categories are clear and intuitive, make it for anyone to understand it so they can get to the answer they need.
If you are going to send push notifications: whether it is to follow up on a problem or to send any kind of update, make sure you have the opt-in.
Conclusions
As you can see, WhatsApp is a dynamic channel that allows you to offer student attention in different ways.
You can configure a chatbot that answers questions 24/7, have a live chat where human agents can answer complex questions, and send push notifications to follow up on a problem. And this is only the beginning of all the possibilities of the conversational world.
What are you waiting for to give a great customer experience to your students?
If you want to know more about how to use WhatsApp in the educational sector...
