By definition, Customer Experience (CX) is an aggregate of a customer’s A-Z experience with a brand. Sounds lofty, right? But, in reality, it’s an entirely personal affair that all boils down to how you make those you aim to serve feel. And it’s a question every school should ask: How do you leave your students feeling about your institution and the value proposition you are providing?
If you’re like most schools, you’re probably saying you could do a little better. Fortunately, there is an easy solution. And once you master it, it will also be your competitive edge. Your secret weapon.
It’s called Live Chat—one of the best kept secrets of all successful university enrollment departments.
Any way you look at it, chatting with your students is a one-on-one opportunity to make a meaningful connection. This means engaging with customers through a response channel—SMS, chat, voice, etc.—preferably one that the prospect desires to use, and on their terms, whenever and wherever they want to communicate. As digital natives, your students have access to the entire world’s information at their fingertips, instantly, when they want it and how they want it. In other words, their “always-on” expectations are set by the digital experiences they get every day. Overwhelmingly, these digital experiences are mobile. In today’s digital revolution, digital-first means mobile-first, and Live Chat is mandatory.
In successful companies across the globe, Live Chat is now one of the leading ways that marketers seek to differentiate their brands. Universities need to follow that lead—building enrollment with a great experience that begins with the prospect journey, which often starts with a simple Live Chat.
“If you do build a great
experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very
powerful.”
Jeff Bezos Founder & CEO, Amazon
Ultimately, successful enrollment marketing departments have one goal—to make it as easy as possible for prospects to learn about their university simply and efficiently. Out of all of the response channels available (email, phone, SMS or chat), Live Chat is by far the simplest, fastest and least obtrusive.
Put another way: LIVE CHAT = CONVERSIONS.
Chat is a scalable and effective way to deliver the personal touch digital natives crave. According to Oracle, 77% of prospects and shoppers want to get in touch with a real person before they make a purchase. What this means for you is simple: if you don’t have chat across the website experience yet, the time to do it is now. At Education Connex, we view it as a catalyst to begin the enrollment discussion, especially when you consider that customers have consistently reported the highest satisfaction rates when it comes to Live Chat. Research shows that users who participate in Live Chat convert 3.5 times as often as those who don’t.
Website visitors are prospects waiting to talk to you. The more you reach out to them through Live Chat, the more you will keep these prospects engaged and interested. Of course, this won’t happen unless you give them instant access to a real-life support agent on your site.
Improve Your Online Advertising ROI
It is clear that EDU Marketing departments are sinking more and more resources into driving traffic to their websites and converting that traffic into leads. However, around 98 percent of these website visitors will leave without providing any information. As an engagement tool, Live Chat can help you reduce friction in the prospect’s journey by providing an option to connect right away. Including Live Chat is a major opportunity for you to increase on-page conversion and shore up those “lead leaks,” capture demand, and increase organic inquiries. We typically see a jump in incremental lead volume of 20 percent.
And, yet, schools still aren’t using Live Chat. In fact, we recently reviewed over 50 non-profit university sites, and a whopping 78% did not have Live Chat on their websites.
Why?
The answer is two-fold. First of all, Live Chat is relatively new. We’re still in uncharted waters. Fortunately, this is a good thing for those schools willing to seize on the opportunity and begin using Live Chat to their competitive advantage.
And, secondly, most schools believe Live Chat is difficult to staff and resource, or it requires expensive software. And it’s true. It does.
At least most of the time.
At Education Connex, we’ve removed these obstacles by offering a simple, branded, and cost-effective Live Chat solution that includes software and staffing.
And we do it all 24×7.
In short, we’re making it easier than ever to connect you with prospects who will drive your enrollment growth.
Call us today…and let us help you gain a competitive advantage by offering Live Chat on your website.
Your students are waiting to get to know you.
