Colleges and universities have paying “customers” just like businesses do, and like a business, they need to provide a positive customer experience, or they risk turning off current or prospective students and parents. This includes interactions on the phone and even chat. In fact, while many institutions are forced to turn away would-be students due to over-enrollment, many smaller institutions must compete to fill their enrollment quotas.
Reaching out to prospective students often includes outbound calling campaigns. These agent-to-customer interactions often serve as a primary means of attracting new students, so it’s important to ensure that your agents are doing the best job possible selling students on the merits of your institution. The best way to monitor customer service levels is with quality management and call recording software, which capture interactions enabling managers to assess recorded conversations.
In fact, higher education institutions should consider recording interactions for a variety of reasons, whether the calls are over landline, VoIP or even chat (for example, Skype for Business). These use cases include:
- Verification and dispute resolution – Whether it is the registrar’s office, student housing department, admissions office or campus police, call center agents and university staff field calls from current and future students, parents and others for myriad of reasons – tuition assistance, billing questions, scholarship inquiries, housing service needs, admissions, records/transcripts and more. Many of these calls have the potential to cause issues for the university in the event of a dispute over who said what. Recording these interactions protects the institution and the student/parent.
- Agent performance – Many departments have call center agents and staff members who field and place calls to and from students and parents. Providing a high level of service during these interactions will leave individuals with a good feeling. However, if the call goes south, it can result in negative word of mouth which can quickly spiral out of control potentially causing image problems. Recorded calls enable quality managers to review interactions to reward agents who have done an exceptional job and possibly use those recorded calls for training, or to identify agents with skill deficiencies so they can be addressed through training and coaching.
- Safety and security – You hope it never happens, but bad stuff does happen on campus. When students or their parents call in to complain, express concern or ask for help, having call recordings enables you to garner all necessary and relevant details so you can pass that along to your campus security and/or police departments.
Since your university and its various departments may have specific requirements, you want a call recording system that is flexible and supports your specific needs and works well in your unique environments. Don’t settle for a call recorder that is rigid or offers little versatility. It will cause integration challenges and functionality limitations.
Instead, consider an interaction recording solution that gives you the versatility to record all voice and online interactions, provides an easy way to access recordings, and a secure way to store those recordings.
