Customer Service and Support Essentials: 5 Key Components

5 pillars of customer service

1. Easy access for all

Make it easy for all stakeholders — especially underserved and disadvantaged groups — to conveniently connect with the right person in your school or district.

OMNICHANNEL SOLUTION

Let’s Talk helps school district leaders in every department easily meet families where they are — providing an avenue for two-way communication from a variety of channels, including text message, phone call, mobile app, mobile-responsive web pages, chatbot, and social media.

2. A guaranteed timely response

Acknowledge every incoming question, comment, and concern immediately and set expectations as to when the stakeholder will receive a detailed response. As a best practice, seek to close an issue within two business days.

EQUITABLE ACCESS

Let’s Talk empowers education leaders and frontline staff to listen to community feedback, collaborate on and respond quickly to incoming dialogues, and provide exceptional service to their entire school community — ensuring all families have access to the information and support they need.

3. Efficient customer service in schools

K-12 teachers and staff are experiencing a surge of inbound communications — pulling attention away from day-to-day responsibilities and taking a toll on already overwhelmed staff. And online directories with names and titles can be confusing for families if they aren’t sure who to contact — resulting in multiple outreaches to different people and sometimes vastly different responses.

By streamlining communications, creating a knowledge base and response templates, and improving internal collaboration and workflows, you can more efficiently meet the needs of your stakeholders.

UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS

Let’s Talk helps you break down silos, eliminate duplicate efforts, and improve internal collaboration by automatically routing inquiries to the appropriate team and eliminating the opportunity for forgotten emails and unclear resolutions.

A full customer service transformation wouldn’t be complete without consideration of your district’s IT department. From ticketing to device troubleshooting, IT departments can receive hundreds of incoming inquiries per day. Internal and external stakeholders rely on IT leaders to help them resolve concerns quickly and reliably. Hint: Check out this guidebook on IT customer service to get started.

4. A secure experience

Placing a directory and email addresses on your website can be problematic. While stakeholders may appreciate the ability to directly contact someone, this practice creates security issues for your district — often leading to ransomware attacks and an increase in spam. And families experience frustration when their message is unintentionally missed due to email overwhelm.

CONFIDENCE AND CLARITY

Digital communication is becoming the preferred method of school engagement for families. Let’s Talk enables school districts to accommodate the communications needs and preferences of its stakeholders while eliminating security risks and giving stakeholders confidence that they’ll hear back from a real person in a timely manner.

5. Superior experiences

Provide professional development to staff to train them to turn everyday interactions into superior customer service to ensure each response is guaranteed to be accurate, courteous, and complete.

CUSTOMER INTELLIGENCE

Going beyond anecdotes and assumptions, Let’s Talk offers a real-time dashboard that provides valuable insights into the perceptions and experiences of your school community — helping you build trust and improve the school experience for students, families, teachers, and staff.

And with our expert-led, interactive customer service professional development, you can equip staff with the soft skills needed to successfully navigate complex situations and conflicts with families.