It begins with data collection and analysis at scale. The scale is important since the majority of data insights begin with having a sufficient amount of data to pull meaningful insights from. In addition, the more data you can collect, the more widespread your results will be and the more impact you can have on student experiences as a whole.

Once you’ve collected huge swaths of data, you also need to have the right tools and expertise in place to make sense of it—and preferably, to make sense of it in real-time, when you can action it for better learning outcomes.

There are a number of new EdTech platforms that make this easier. But if analyzing and actioning your data insights is an ongoing challenge for your organization, you can also consider outsourcing your customer experience insights to a team of experts, like our team at ROI CX Solutions. With decades of experience in the education industry, we’ve helped education institutions with call center solutions and other customer experience support.

In addition, when you work with nearshore providers, you get access to an expanded talent pool for your contact center.

With in-house teams or onshoring providers, you’re restricted to the US labor market. Unless you have genuine restrictions, there’s no reason to limit your talent to one geographic region. When you work with nearshoring providers, you’ll have access not only to more workers but workers who have quality expertise, advanced training, and specialized skill sets.

At ROI CX Solutions, our nearshore solutions can provide your business with inbound, outbound, or lead generation services at an affordable price and high quality of service. With cloud-based and remote platforms quickly becoming the norm, there’s much less need for geographic proximity.

Nearshoring also means you’re not limited by the ebbs and flows of the US market. The current labor shortage, combined with the “Great Resignation” and increasing inflation in the US, has made hiring across many positions and industries more difficult. Nearshoring can eliminate many of those barriers.

With trust and satisfaction in higher education waning, colleges and universities can use internal data to improve the recruitment and retention process, making it more effective and engaging prospective students more compellingly.

Data-driven recruitment decisions can provide additional insight into what students actually want—that is, consumer preferences—which enables you to make your marketing more effective by providing superior customer experiences. For example, if a prospective student reaches out but you’re not able to connect them with a member of your admissions team for several weeks, you’ve likely already lost the lead. If you can’t reach out quickly, another university will.

Similarly, your recruitment strategies need to be personalized accordingly depending on your student audiences. Customer segmentation is just as important for education institutions as for e-commerce and other brands—yet, it’s not often utilized fully. For example, colleges could employ unique recruitment strategies for first-gen vs. legacy students, for students interested in different programs, or for students who have expressed interest in studying abroad or living off-campus.

Showing you understand your audience is a key way to create effective and memorable customer experiences that will ultimately increase trust and affection for your institution. However, creating a good customer experience doesn’t—or shouldn’t—end with enrollment. Instead, universities also need to focus on retention, by creating compelling customer experiences for current students.

How are students experiencing their educational careers? And how does it compare to other students at other universities?

Great customer experiences—whether your customer is an adult learner taking classes in the evenings online or a traditional student studying full-time on campus—are the basis of retention. And making data-driven decisions based on key experiences, touchpoints, institutional interactions, and other drivers is essential for implementing customer experiences that matter.

Many educational institutions overlook this, but this is also a key piece of the student experience and the decision-making process. Recent data reveals that at least 54% of consumers make purchasing decisions based on their customer service experiences—and decisions in the education sector are no different.

For most students, their education is one of the biggest financial investments they’ll make. As a result, the service and experience they have before they make that decision are crucial. Customer service is especially important in departments like admissions, financial aid, student loans, and the registrar’s office—departments prospective students are likely to speak with and have lots of questions for. Positive or negative experiences here can make or break their decision.

Thankfully, good customer service doesn’t have to be complicated.

According to a study by PwC, more than 80% of consumers cited four areas of service—speed, helpfulness, friendly agents, and convenience—as the most essential elements of a positive customer experience.

Speed and convenience are often difficult for higher education institutions. While students are accustomed to 24/7 service that’s available instantly and on-demand, many institutions are still offering service during business hours only, and often only via a select few channels, such as phone and email. As students come to expect more accessible, quick service, education institutions need to catch up.

As a result, many higher ed institutions are partnering with outsourcing providers to fulfill customer service needs. For example, with ROI CX Solutions, we work with higher ed institutions to provide customer service for financial aid, enrollment assistance, and more.

In addition, working with an outsourcing partner can help strengthen the usage of data to improve customer service. Tracking metrics like CSAT, FCR, average wait time, and more are all relevant for the education industry—and measuring these metrics over time will provide valuable insights into how to improve and cater your customer experience to your students.

While most data analytics look for historical trends and insights, using predictive analytics can allow you to understand—and take action on—important warning signs and trends before they create negative repercussions for your customers or institution.

Consider the usage of predictive analytics by the University of Alabama. Through their data, they realized that first-year students who requested a copy of their transcript were at high risk of dropping out. As a result, they were able to connect students who made a transcript request with counselors and other support staff to reduce their risk of dropping their program.

Similarly, your own data can yield these types of insights as well—but first, you need to be measuring and analyzing large-scale data. Once you are, predictive analytics can help not only your operations but can also provide a better student experience.

As technology in the classroom becomes more ubiquitous and the demand for EdTech grows, the ability to have real-time data and classroom insights will grow as well. This is great news for student success: the more data available, the more instructors and educators can make data-driven decisions to guide student success and improve learner outcomes.

We are entering a new realm of possibility where we can measure, in real time, how each student is engaging with their learning space, the types of interactions they are having with their peers and their responses to subject matter presented in class. There is a growing recognition that insights provided by data analysis are essential to the short- and long-term support of a student’s learning journey.

Times Higher Education

For example, modern digital learning platforms can provide insights for instructors into how students are engaging with course materials, help gauge students’ understanding, and understand which students are in “learning zones” vs. “panic zones.” Having accurate data for such minute engagement details can allow instructors to make real-time adjustments to lessons and course curricula to increase additional scaffolding, support struggling learners, and ensure students get the support they need.