First chatbot designed for K-12 school districts now available
Oct. 28, 2020 – With a notable uptick in inbound communications for school districts across the nation, K12 Insight has introduced Let’s Talk Assistant—the first-ever chatbot designed specifically to help school leaders provide always-on customer service, create internal efficiencies, and improve the school customer experience.
“Chatbot itself isn’t a new concept—but one designed specifically to address the needs of educational leaders and their stakeholders is,” said K12 Insight’s Founder and CEO Suhail Farooqui, who has been intimately involved in the conception and design of Let’s Talk Assistant. “We’ve used our more than a decade of experience in the K-12 space and data from hundreds of school districts across the nation to create a chatbot that really meets the needs of everyone in the educational community.”
Accessible via a widget on a school district’s website, Let’s Talk Assistant gives parents, students, and others a fast, easy way to get answers to frequently asked questions whenever their schedules allow—24 hours a day, seven days a week. An additional in-chat option enables families to submit more nuanced or complex inquiries directly to staff members for a timely response, ensuring an answer to every question.
A back-end Performance Report provides key metrics and insights in real-time—including number of inquiries, customer satisfaction, trending topics, and time saved—to help school leaders measure their impact and respond to their community’s needs. In addition, since it is powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), Let’s Talk Assistant automatically learns with each question asked.
“One of the greatest misconceptions about chatbots in the education space is that they are meant to be a wall between community members and the school district,” Farooqui shared. “In reality, Let’s Talk Assistant allows for a better customer experience by enabling community members to get quick answers to FAQs while still having an option to engage directly with staff members.”
Indiana’s Fort Wayne Community Schools was one of the first districts to launch Let’s Talk Assistant—a step that aligns with its innovative, customer-focused culture. In the first 30 days alone, the district’s chatbot (which they’ve named Charley) answered more than 400 questions from over 200 community members, with an average customer satisfaction score of 9.6 out of 10.
“Let’s Talk Assistant is as efficient for us as it is for families. It gives parents an intuitive way to ask questions whenever their schedules allow—even if it’s after hours—and get an immediate, precise response,” said Krista Stockman, Public Information Officer at Fort Wayne Community Schools. “That frees up our staff to attend to other responsibilities, including high-touch customer interactions.”
The district also uses K12 Insight’s Let’s Talk online customer service ticketing solution, which integrates seamlessly with the new Let’s Talk Assistant to provide a robust system for understanding and improving community engagement and the customer experience.
“The secret to creating a chatbot that truly works for districts is to provide more than just a chatbot,” Farooqui explained. “By integrating with Let’s Talk, school leaders get the full picture of customer service in their district with real-time, actionable insights. Conversations with Let’s Talk Assistant feed into that and become another way for school leaders to listen to, learn from, and serve their community.”
Let’s Talk Assistant is available now. Request a demo.
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