School on the Line? They Might Be Calling From the Cloud

May 21, 2015

Anyone who’s attended or graduated from a two- or four-year college knows the drill by now: Once you’re done, you’ll be getting calls on a regular basis, asking for a donation. It’s not the worst call to get, especially if you look back on your learning years with a certain fondness. When I get such calls, it’s usually from a current student at the school, and I like to ask them about campus events, what their major is and so forth. Having worked in such centers during my time at school, I know how much that human interaction means to the caller.

And it would seem that academia has gotten wise to the benefits of using the latest technology to make their call center efforts even more productive. According to a recent blog by Carlen Self, who describes herself as an ‘advocate for cloud-delivered customer interactions’ at cloud call center leader inContact, the cloud is now fulfilling a bigger role in schools’ efforts.

“Collegiate contact centers are most often small groups staffed by representatives who have a wide range of tasks and responsibilities in addition to answering the phone,” Self notes in her post. “They also have volunteers and part-time students who help out. These representatives reside in small departmental groups spread throughout the campus. When aggregated, the combined groups comprise a significant contact center enabling the school to take advantage of economies of scale to provision these groups with advanced technology, improving efficiency and effectiveness.”

Those economies of scale she refers to include utilizing cloud contact center solutions, like the one available from inContact.

Such solutions “easily address the fluctuation in demand for administrative needs, academic services and auxiliary offices around the campus,” she says. “The cloud contact center platform can deliver technologies which have historically been unattainable due to the prohibitive cost of premises-based solutions.”

Among the contact center capabilities in higher education available are routing for multimedia contacts; queue announcements; the availability of an automated attendant and campus directory; self-service applications and more.

In short, Self observes that by utilizing cloud contact center solutions, “higher education can keep pace with the technological savviness of their constituents – students, potential students and alumni – while lowering operating costs.” And at the end of the day, isn’t that what the call center is all about?