Missouri Department of Education launches Let's Talk Assistant

May 1, 2021 – Committed to improving customer service and quickly and efficiently responding to often time-sensitive educator needs in schools across the state, the Missouri Department of Education recently announced the launch of Let’s Talk Assistant, from K12 Insight.

In the transition back to in-person learning, state educators say they are fielding thousands of questions and concerns from school officials and other stakeholders, including parents. To confidently meet the increase in demand, the state sought a system and a process to streamline communication, provide more opportunities for collaboration and reduce the time and resources required to respond, while effectively tracking and measuring overall customer satisfaction.

State officials say the Let’s Talk platform, from K12 Insight, will help them build stronger community relationships, identify opportunities for engagement 24/7, and quickly prioritize and respond to questions. A real-time dashboard lets administrators monitor important metrics like response time and customer service score and quickly displays critical issues, so officials can prioritize high-stakes outreach.

The Let’s Talk Assistant feature, a virtual chatbot, uses an organic knowledge base and AI to help stakeholders find answers to common questions in minutes, without picking up the phone or sending email, increasing customer satisfaction and reducing the time staff spend conducting outreach.

“In this age of information, stakeholders are accustomed to getting answers quickly — our K-12 stakeholders often need that timely information to make important decisions for students across our state,” said Missouri Commissioner of Education Dr. Margie Vandeven. “Implementing the Let’s Talk app has been a great step in our journey to improve both our efficiency and effectiveness in the area of customer service, and we believe taking advantage of the chatbot feature within the app will help even more by providing real-time responses to our most common questions.”

“Research shows that school districts are fielding 190% more questions and concerns from parents and staff this year,” said Suhail Farooqui, CEO of K12 Insight. “That kind of volume requires schools to be very intentional about how they respond. We applaud state education officials in Missouri for making customer service a priority and look forward to supporting them, as they look for ways to support educators both now, during a time of intense transition, and into the future.”

Specifically, the technology delivers four core benefits for school districts and/or departments looking to create an equitable environment for parents and families, improve departmental efficiencies, drive stronger community and staff engagement and/or improve safety communication.

With Let’s Talk, school leaders can:

• Engage. Students, parents and staff can provide feedback 24/7 from any device in a safe, secure environment.
• Respond. The system time-stamps and immediately routes every inquiry to the right person or persons for an accurate, timely, courteous and complete response.
• Analyze. A real-time dashboard tracks response times and provides a customer feedback score, helping to drive efficiencies, while improving the customer experience.
• Reduce risk/frustration. A special Critical Alerts feature creates a notification when questions or comments containing specific keywords, such as guns or suicide, are received. Administrators can then collaborate to respond.

To learn more about Let’s Talk, or Let’s Talk Assistant and how it can help build trust and improve customer service in your schools this year, visit k12insight.com and sign up for a free consultation.