Back to School: 10 Tips for Superior Customer Service

Here are some ideas to help you plan for a stronger, more connected school year.

The back-to-school season is here and it’s likely your team is already sifting through endless questions, concerns, and requests from every direction.

Without a customer service strategy in place, this influx of inquiries can create an environment for slow, siloed, and inefficient communications — leading to overwhelmed staff and frustrated families.

Let’s Talk — the only all-in-one customer experience and intelligence platform built for education — can help you manage and unify communications in your school district, especially during the busy back-to-school months.

As you prepare for the new school year, here are 10 ways Let’s Talk can elevate your district’s customer service.

1. Create a one-stop shop for all questions and concerns.

From bus routes to registration details, parents and students need critical information at the start of the school year.

Let’s Talk empowers you and your staff to collaborate on and respond quickly to incoming dialogues, send outbound communications, and provide superior service to their entire school community.

2. Calm the chaos.

Endless inquiries coupled with a demand for immediate answers can leave school staff feeling overwhelmed.

Let’s Talk offers a unified, districtwide inbox for inbound communications — including email, voicemail, and text message — that automatically routes messages to the right department or staff member. Let’s Talk gives your stakeholders confidence they’ll get answers quickly — ensuring all families have access to the information and support they need.

3. Streamline responses.

Critical Race Theory. Book bans. Mask mandates. It’s hard to predict what issue will come up next.

Consistent messaging is critical for managing trending topics and keeping your district out of the headlines. To help staff respond to tough questions consistently and accurately, you can set up response templates in Let’s Talk with vetted and approved messaging.

4. Implement chatbot technology for 24-7 service.

More than 70% of the questions fielded by school districts each year are repeat questions.

Let’s Talk Assistant — the first chatbot built specifically for K-12 school districts — helps district stakeholders get answers to frequently asked questions 24-7, saving your staff time and allowing them to focus on more nuanced requests.

5. Take a proactive approach to monitoring issues.

All it takes is one crisis to change everything. And it’s far too easy for important messages and concerns to get lost — especially during the busy back-to-school season.

Let’s Talk provides a dashboard that captures live data and insights to help you make better decisions, spot trends and needs, and prevent crises. And with Let’s Talk Critical Alerts, you’ll receive early warnings to prevent health, safety, and security issues before they escalate.

6. Increase access to support and information.

Some families can be hard to reach — particularly economically disadvantaged, underserved, and multilingual families.

Let’s Talk helps your school district practice inclusivity by providing translation to 13 languages by default (plus additional language options available) and Spanish language capabilities through the Let’s Talk Assistant chatbot. Using Let’s Talk, your district can better manage multilingual communications, demonstrate cultural competency, and meet the diverse needs of your community.

7. Anticipate the needs of your stakeholders.

From questions about Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) to curriculum concerns, there are many hot topics you can expect to hear about from parents every school year.

Let’s Talk Knowledge Base allows you to create informational articles answering frequently asked questions — which can help reduce the volume of inbound stakeholder inquiries by as much as 60%.

8. Ensure accountability.

A decentralized web of complexity and muddled accountability presents new challenges as school districts experience an influx of communications through email, text messaging, website contact forms, social media, messaging apps, and other emerging technology.

Let’s Talk helps your district deliver effective and engaging customer service, easier and quicker — saving school staff time, energy, and sanity. Each dialogue is assigned to a staff member, and the real-time dashboard provides quick and valuable insights into the number of dialogues, response rates, and customer satisfaction.

9. Make proactive changes based on data.

You can’t improve what you don’t measure.

The Let’s Talk dashboard — powered by AI and predictive analytics — is simple to access, understand, and use. With simplified data and predictive analytics to reveal trends and needs, you’ll receive deep insights into the perceptions and experiences of your school communities. This allows you to make better decisions, spot trends and needs, and even reduce student and staff churn.

10. Simplify your district’s technology.

School districts often have a lot of applications and technology — eating up a lot of time and energy.

Improve efficiency and reduce the “swivel chair” effect by integrating Let’s Talk into your district’s day-to-day processes — such as IT ticketing and outbound communications to parents. Automated workflows to help eliminate repetitive tasks to boost efficiency, manage costs, reduce risk, and streamline internal communications.