6 Ways Salesforce Service Cloud Rocks Your Student Services

Service Cloud

Re-imagine and re-engineer how you service and support your students and constituents. From self-service portals to contact centers, and even on social media, Service Cloud can help deliver exceptional service to boost satisfaction and loyalty. Deliver fast, efficient and engaging services anywhere, any time on any device with Service Cloud.

Create Convenience and Engagement with One-Stop Services

Now more than ever, digital transformation plays a key role for institutions looking to deliver engaging experiences to their students.  

While many institutions have gone digital to a certain extent and are offering some digital services to students, there are still many a number of tasks required across the student journey that result in plenty of paperwork and unnecessary queues across the campus. With Salesforce, educational institutions can provide a virtual one-stop where students can get digital access to all those activities.

A “one-stop” is just that – a unified hub for communication, engagement and collaboration. Saving time and resources for the institution and students, and eliminating student frustration.

Salesforce empowers you to connect and assist your campus community in ways that your students expect. Salesforce Service Cloud, which can be used as part of Education Cloud, can deliver real-time, personalized service to support student needs through a single, unified digital platform.

How exactly does Service Cloud work?

Students can now be empowered to communicate with advisors and staff across all channels—email, chat, online communities, social media and more. Service Cloud transforms those communications into cases, or in Service Cloud parlance, a support ticket. Cases can then be assigned to service agents, who are basically staff members at your institution who resolve student support issues.

Case management allows staff and advisors to have a centralised and unified view of student support cases to ensure each case is assigned to the right staff member, at the right time. And Service Cloud works behind the scenes to manage that with in-built smart automation.

Here are 6 features of Service Cloud that drive the student experience:

Case Creation

Today’s students rely heavily on a digital mode of communication across their social network – friends, family, and the businesses they shop with. They expect a similar experience when interacting with their educational institution. Service Cloud makes this possible by empowering you to completely customize the ways in which students can connect with your services based on your institution’s unique preferences and needs.

The primary objective of student services is to make students’ lives easier, and multi-channel communication makes that possible. Students can quickly and effortlessly submit cases and automated case creation and tracking ensures that all activities and communication is recorded and tracked. In simple terms, nothing will fall through the cracks. Additionally, advisors and staff have access to student case histories, so case information is an integrated part of the 360-degree view of each student.

Quick Replies

Support staff can provide prompt replies to common queries and scenarios with pre-defined messages. Greetings and acknowledgments can now be delivered without intervention. Emailed cases can be processed through customised service flows for seamless management of student issues.

Queues

Cases are organized by case type so staff can select the cases they have the skillset to resolve.  Monitoring and tracking of interaction continuity is critical to effective engagement. Assigned cases can be linked to a student’s record, allowing staff to get complete visibility of the case and add any modifications to it. 

Live Support

Chat support driven by live agents who can provide personalised assistance to students in real time. No more appointments.

Bots deliver automated chat support with pre-defined answers to resolve common questions in real time. All turbo-charged with the power of AI.

Knowledge

Salesforce Service Cloud allows you to build and share an information repository across campus and from multiple devices to all your eco-system constituents. You can create a searchable FAQ of audited articles organised by topic that students can refer to 24/7 to access information they seek, without waiting for an email reply or scheduling an appointment. Process documents and articles organised by topic and subject matter can be browsed through effortlessly from any device.

Metrics

What is the point of delivering services if you cannot measure student engagement success? Salesforce Service Could offers you reports on one-stop metrics to analyse and act on your Salesforce Data. You can view your data, examine it, understand it and share your insights with your team members.

Service Cloud can help gauge the service needs of your students and how well your current methods are delivering results. Here are some of the metrics you can discover with Service Cloud reporting.

• Case opens and closures
• Time to case closure
• Case trends
• Variance in case origin (source of case origin like email and social)
• Who asks what (case variation by subject major, demographic, etc.)

Reports on key metrics empower you to make informed, actionable decisions based on the story revealed by your data. Now you can discover your top services and seasonal trends, create topics and targeted communications to support your student community. And once you are armed with a clear view on the time it takes to resolve cases, you can examine your current processes and make necessary improvements.

Want to know more about how Salesforce can help your institution drive rich engaging experiences for your students? Get in touch with a certified Salesforce Consultant today.

About Author

Indranil Chakraborty

Indranil is a technology enthusiast with over 25 years of experience in project management, operations, technology and business development. Indranil has led project teams in egovernance, business process re-engineering, product development and worked with Government and Corporate customers. Indranil truly believes in the power of technology to drive productivity and growth for teams and businesses.