5 Ways real-time student feedback can transform your customer service
Getting feedback from the students that fuel your school’s purpose isn’t just a good idea – it’s absolutely essential to keep your school community thriving. But simply collecting periodic feedback isn’t enough to fuel your school’s beating heart, especially when that feedback begins to gather dust before it can be put to good use.
The digital age has propelled the feedback process to new heights, both in how student response is given and received, and how feedback recipients can utilize these discoveries. Where schools used to rely on annual surveys and paper comment cards to gauge student interest, digital technology can now help to implement a more omnipresent feedback strategy that not only delivers almost immediate results, but aggregates those results into crucial analytics.
Which might just be the missing links to your entire experience improvement strategy.
5 Ways Real Time Student Feedback Shapes Your Customer Service
It encourages two-way communication.
In a recent customer experience survey, only 31% of respondents indicated they felt satisfied their feedback was being used effectively. If you want to gather feedback, people need to know their efforts to communicate their experiences are not wasted.
Feedback tools like texting platforms, social media and live panels open a two-way communication path that not only delivers student feedback, but also allows you to respond directly to individuals. Taking time to acknowledge their feedback helps to personalize the experience on a person-to-person level that no comment card or auto-response email alone could ever match.
It elicits more honest responses.
While email surveys were once the bread and butter of student feedback, they seem to have somewhat lost their flair for accuracy. It could be that students have reached their survey breaking point, or that they have no interest in the survey topics. Studies show that when users can provide real-time in-the-moment feedback, they tend to offer more instinctive, honest answers. And those types of answers are the only ones that will ever make a difference.
It helps create informed decisions.
Given that real-time feedback can help elicit more honest responses, you can use the data you collect to drive your decisions. Whether you are learning about the student experience through text surveys, social media comments, or student panels, you can rely on their genuine reactions to help you determine what your next steps on the customer service front should be.
It provides on-going feedback opportunities.
You don’t need a 30-question survey to find out every detail you want to know all at once. Using real time communication tools, like social media, texting platforms, and QR codes can deliver short surveys on a continuous basis that won’t result in feedback overload.
When you can capture feedback in short bursts, you stand a better chance of keeping the student’s attention long enough to complete the feedback request. Remember, feedback is never a finished task; rather, you should ask for feedback often to discover new opportunities for outreach and improvement.
It creates urgency to act.
With traditional methods of collecting feedback, it could take days, weeks, or months before someone could compile a mass of student responses into usable data. Making real time feedback a main player in your feedback strategy give you the opportunity to put those responses to good use sooner.
There is no doubt the digital revolution has reshaped the way we communicate. Nowadays there exist more tools than ever that can discover nearly anything we want to know, whenever we need it.
And the sooner you can learn exactly what kind of experience you are delivering from a student’s perspective, the better chance you have of crafting a solid action plan to fill your gaps and maintain your strong points.
