Support in Education Institutions

When people think of customer support, they commonly associate it with companies helping end-users with their product or service. Support, however, also includes helping people working within a company. It could be support provided to prospects, employees, vendors, or partners. One of the best examples of a business that is required to support different sets of people both internally and externally is an educational institution.

At schools and universities, dedicated teams help prospective students who may have questions about a course or their application status. Once an applicant is enrolled as a student, different teams help in administrative tasks like organizing classes, collecting fees and finding accommodation. Every day, classes require the use of numerous IT equipment and services such as projectors, printers and wifi. Whenever there is an IT-related issue, the IT team provides support to students and staff.

These different teams that support students and staff at educational institutions face unique challenges. Administrative teams get exceptionally busy at the start of every academic year. IT teams often spend time answering simple questions. All in all, repetitive and arduous tasks for the support teams at educational institutions can make work challenging and in the worst case, boring.

With a customer support software like Freshdesk in place, teams will only have to spend time in work that requires their skill. Repetitive tasks can be automated leading to increased productivity and efficient workload management. Here’s how different teams at schools and universities can benefit from Freshdesk.

IT teams

IT teams are the backbone of any organization that uses technical infrastructure like wi-fi, computers and printers. They constantly work behind the scenes to ensure the smooth functioning and maintenance of the IT infrastructure.

When students or staff have a problem with an IT equipment or service, it’s the IT team that helps. At schools and universities, in particular, they are closely involved in the organization and management of technical events and competitions. Here’s how Freshdesk helps IT teams.

Streamline customer enquiries

IT teams at many schools and universities get questions and complaints from staff via email, phone and in-person. A lot of time and effort is spent keeping track of every pending request. With Freshdesk, IT teams don’t have to spend excessive time organizing their work. Customizable inbox views in Freshdesk makes it easy for every person in the team to keep track of their pending staff enquiries. They are automatically categorized and sorted based on priority.

Make self-service easily with an IT portal

IT teams typically spend a lot of time in repeatedly answering simple questions. With Freshdesk, they can easily create a self-service IT portal for staff and students. Staff can get answers to their questions immediately using the portal and hence, the number of enquiries the IT team has to work with decreases.

Get complete context

For every enquiry, Freshdesk provides context for the person writing to them and the history of issues they have reported. IT teams can immediately get to troubleshooting issues without having to worry about asking the staff for more information.

Administrative teams

Smooth operations in any company depend on administrative teams. On an everyday basis, different administrative teams in a company oversee operations within their department, coordinate between different teams, and plan according to the needs of the company. The role of administrative teams is crucial in schools and universities. Different administrative teams help in enrolling students, onboarding them and managing finances and facilities. During busy months, some administrative teams tend to have an overload of work. As an example, teams responsible for admissions need to work with a huge volume of student enrollments before the start of school.

Educational institutions that use email or legacy solutions always have trouble managing work, especially during these busy months. Delays and lapses in communication from the administrative teams are a common sight in even the best of schools and universities. With Freshdesk, Administrative teams can:

Save time from repetitive work

Freshdesk’s powerful automations can scan through every single task at hand and have it triaged, categorized and updated. A person’s efforts will be required only in tasks that engage their skill.

Work more efficiently

Administrative teams at educational institutions are often required to perform repetitive tasks. With Freshdesk, emails can be sent in bulk and records can be updated with a single click enabling teams to get minutes of work done in seconds.

Collaborate effortlessly

Administrative teams have dependencies on different departments at their school or university to complete tasks. As an example, teams responsible for admissions coordinate between prospective students and teaching staff to finalize applications. They typically follow-up with teaching staff and applicants on different email threads or chat windows before making updates on yet another system. With Freshdesk, teams can collaborate effortlessly with different departments they need help from while never losing sight of their task.

Student Groups

All schools and universities have student groups that work towards common goals, share common interests or have members from similar backgrounds. With the growth of social media usage amongst students, student groups are now more active ever.

With a simple helpdesk solution like Freshdesk, organizing events, campaigns and keeping members engaged can be made so much more efficient. Student organizers needn't compromise on their academic scores or their participation in their group. Here’s why students will love using Freshdesk.

Actively engage with members using forums

With Freshdesk forums, participants in student groups can have constructive conversations around different topics of interests, initiate ideas based on popularity, and make announcements to the group's members. Student groups that seek to spread awareness can increase engagement by using a publicly available forum that any member of the school or university can participate i

Manage social media easily

Student groups generally have a strong social presence. Student group heads can engage with messages from their group on Facebook and Twitter with a single Freshdesk account.

Organize on the go

Freshdesk’s mobile app makes it easy for students to manage activities related to their student groups on the go. With the app, students can collaborate, socialize, organize and get work done faster

Relevant resources

Customer service questions for schools
BLOG

15 customer service questions for schools
Customer service in schools
BLOG

4 examples of good customer service in schools
Customer friendly schools
BLOG

How customer-friendly is your school?
Helpdesk for education
 BLOG

10 reasons for schools to adopt a customer service mindset

Schools and Universities that use Freshdesk