Improving Customer Service in Higher Education: 2022 Guide

In a typical consumer context, customers are more likely to stick around when they have positive and rewarding interactions with a particular business. And even though colleges and universities aren’t businesses per se, they interact with prospective students and families in similar ways. Although the end result is different (enrollment versus making a purchase), the steps to achieve a conversion are often similar.

College admissions offices should be trained and well-prepared to facilitate exceptional customer service experiences. After all, students and their families want assurance that they’re spending their enrollment dollars at the right school. So how can admissions and enrollment officers deliver a five-star customer (student) experience?

By investing in the right tools, resources, and training, the way to win the customer service game is relatively simple. 

In this post, we’ll break down how and why your school should focus on customer satisfaction in college admissions.

How Does Customer Service Apply to Higher Education?

Since 2020, college enrollment numbers have dropped by nearly 1 million students. As a result, post-secondary schools are under increasing pressure to deliver top-notch experiences at every step of the educational journey. That means serving up impressive customer relations experiences as soon as more students voice their interest. 

Unfortunately, some college professionals think that their own schools are failing to deliver these services and experiences, which can include basic skills related to communication, information retrieval, marketing, engagement, and financial assistance. In 2020, Forbes Magazine, cited data from Academic Impressions survey: only six out of 79 higher education professionals graded their own institutions highly in terms of customer service.  

While these shortcomings might not directly contribute to enrollment dips, they certainly don’t do anything to offset the costs and downsides of lower enrollment numbers. For schools that want to build foolproof strategies for attracting new students, investing in customer service training could be the way to go.

3 Ways to Provide Quality Service in the Admissions Process

It’s clear that customer service experiences happen everywhere you look in the college student lifecycle. From financial aid assistance to housing and academics, students will continuously engage with school staff and make decisions about their experiences. 

But only some of these experiences take place at the admissions level. It’s there that students get their first interactions with school staff members, and it’s important that those initial impressions are positive and engaging. From staying in touch with students to remembering important information about them, here are three practical ways that you can improve your customer service skills.

1. Adequate Document Management Systems

Keeping tabs on where documents are within the student application and admissions process is vital. School admissions teams can use a customer relationship management (CRM) platform to keep track of students and new campaigns better.

For students and families, document management (including paper, digital files, and electronic documents) could relate to any of the following items.

• Inquiries from the recruitment stage
• New applications for admissions
• Background or informational paperwork
• Financial, aid, and scholarship documents 
• Student health and safety waivers
• Deposit and commitment documents (intent to enroll)

Colleges and universities are responsible for keeping track of this important data and for keeping it secure. Doing so not only provides a better enrollment experience, but it also increases student confidence and trust in the entire process. 

2. Personalized Video Messages

Modern students want to feel like more than just a number in line for enrollment. To achieve this, schools must pay careful attention to the ways that they personalize communications, messages, and campaigns to incoming students. 

Video integration within your admissions cycle can create personal connections between staff and students. Additionally, using video messaging in an email can increase response rates by up to 200%. With these impressive results, admissions officers can eliminate much of the tedious back-and-forth associated with keeping tabs on students in the pipeline.

Moreover, when students recognize a friendly face during the admissions process, they may be more motivated to engage and follow through on the next steps. This is because students know that they’re working with actual people who can advocate for them and assist them throughout a busy (and potentially stressful) transition.

3. Timely and Relevant Higher Education Content

Another way to improve the student experience within the admissions process is by delivering the right content at the right times. For example, you don’t want to send out deadline reminders to students who have already accepted and registered for courses. These mistakes (which are relatively easy to fix) can decrease student confidence and leave them second-guessing their decisions.

It’s always important to match up new content and communications with where students are in the enrollment cycle. Whether that means sending out the correct dates, providing next steps with relevant links, or simply improving online user experiences, these factors make a huge difference in how students feel.

Personalized marketing campaigns are also helpful for targeting students before they make enrollment decisions. By creating unique customer experiences, you’ll be better equipped to communicate the value you place on new enrollments. In the long term, this type of personalization may contribute to retention and student success.

Avoid Problems with Customer Satisfaction in Higher Education

Colleges and universities interact with a diverse pool of applicants and students on a daily basis. Depending on the size of the school in question, this workload can become overwhelming for small teams and offices. Even so, poor customer service experiences can put a damper on keeping students engaged and happy.

Some of these “misses” in customer service are fairly common. Most mistakes include some version of the following problems.

• Student inquiries that get lost in the shuffle
• Failure to respond directly to student messages and questions
• Lack of empathy for the stress and anxiety students and families often feel
• Missed opportunities to provide direction and next steps

While many of these issues can be quickly resolved with the right processes, it’s easy for large institutions to overlook them. This leads some higher education experts to recommend auditing each customer interaction, with an independent third party of “mystery shopper” to provide major mistakes from going unchecked. 

How a Student Engagement Platform Can Help

If personalizing your customer service tactics sounds cumbersome, there are resources to alleviate the burden. Providing highly-ranked student service is a big deal, but it also means devoting time, resources, and monetary investments into making it a priority.

With an engagement platform like Element451, you can reclaim  control of your school’s student engagement from the very first interaction. This involves automating the application and enrollment process, exploring real-time insights into student enrollment, and transforming the entire workflow so that it’s more student driven.

At the end of the day, customer service at colleges and universities is all about students. So why not invest in a tool that helps you place those students and their specific needs first?

Serve Your Students Well

We know that today’s students care about the service they receive from admissions offices at colleges and universities. As the field grows increasingly competitive, institutions need to invest in tools and software programs that help them truly stand out.

Customer service is simply one of many ways that your departments can strive to go above and beyond for prospective students this year.

If you aren’t an Element451 customer yet, you’re invited to schedule a demo today. We’ll help you get started on your journey to personalized student engagement that helps you beat enrollment dips and get an A+ in customer service.