Education sector as a beneficiary of cloud telephony

Education is currently one of the majorly transformed sectors in the country, be it in terms of infrastructure or upgrading the style of teaching. It has experienced an enhancement in its teaching process, and this comes majorly due to the recent technological advancements in the field.

With the arrival of technologies like cloud telephony, not only the communication system of the educational institutions has been upgraded but has also made its accessibility through calls much easier. This was however, much required for this particular niche as education is no more confined to the four walls of a classroom. Concepts like E-learning have broken all the geographical barriers to allow students across the countries to attain knowledge easily. And so, efficient on-call communication is required for an easy connectivity between teachers and students.

Certainly, conventional phone systems here wouldn't prove to be efficient to handle the increased call volume of the educational institutions. Its limitations won't allow the students to connect with their concerned department on time and easily. Herein, cloud telephony has emerged as a great remedy for modern educational institutions to help them improve their customer calling experience.

Handling calls manually is often seen as the foremost cause of concern today. Few executives are hired to attend all the calls and which is indeed a hectic and challenging task for them. As a result, a significant number of calls often get missed.

This is where an IVR steps in as a remedy. With recorded message being set in the IVR, most of the parents/students' queries get resolved without connecting with the executive. For other queries, callers can connect with the executive as well through the IVR menu. This majorly eliminates the need for manual interference and effort in call management.

Also, it provides faster on-call resolution to the callers.Thus, making the on-call communication easier and less time-consuming. Another situation wherein the need for such a service arises is when institutions have to notify students and parents at last minute about sudden change in timings, holiday, etc. Manually texting/calling each student involves lots of efforts and cost. Also, the inaccuracy in conventional method will result in parents/students still remaining unaware of the last-minute change thus, unnecessary troubles.

This purpose is well served by an outbound IVR. Parents and students are informed of the message through the recorded voice. And also, calls will be automatically dialled on the given numbers stored in the database. This saves time and effort and also ensures accuracy.

Similarly, SMS can also be used for this purpose which is another cost-efficient solution and will generate effective results.

The need to kill competition is another reason why many institutions are adopting cloud telephony. Every university, school or coaching centre wants to step ahead of their competitors. Besides other factors, upgraded customer-service is seen as a master-player to outstand your competitors. Here, the customer calling experience plays a major role.

Customer care number like 1800 tollfree number conveys a professional and bigger brand image in front of your potential customers. It enhances customer-calling experience significantly by connecting the callers with the institution at zero cost. Toll-free numbers also add to the customer's trust and credibility towards the institution.

In fact, institutions who have multiple branches and contact numbers face even more difficulty in call handling and even marketing for that matter. Transferring calls, maintaining a large database, publishing/advertising different contact numbers becomes tedious as well as expensive.

Cloud-based phone systems have provided the required solution to such problems. Virtual phone numbers serve as a centralised phone number for different branches. Multiple numbers are mapped behind a virtual number and call is routed as per the caller's nearest branch (with location-based IVR). A centralised number also saves the marketing cost and helps callers automatically connect with their respective branch and get faster on-call resolution.

To summarise, the education sector is a proven beneficiary of cloud technology. Besides providing top-notch learning, institutions can now provide upgraded calling experience as well. Cloud telephony has effectively resolved their everyday communication challenges and also helped them construct a better brand reputation.