Beating summer term fatigue in the education sector

Communication in higher education is challenging, as universities and colleges are large, and often complex, organisations, with many buildings and often multiple campuses – not to mention their own policies, facilities, cultures and even communications programs.

This can lead to poor information flow, information ‘silos’, and can make collaboration and knowledge sharing across different user groups tricky.

The summer term is often fraught with communications challenges

The summer term is especially fraught for HE and FE settings. Exams, sporting events and graduations all compete for space in the minds and inboxes of students, parents, teachers and organisers, often under scrutiny from governing bodies. Payments have to be scheduled, requested, made, and if not made, then chased up. Bookings have to entered and seat reservations confirmed.

Most university or college office staff are on their knees by the start of July, not least if they are running a PBX phone system and managing all their messaging across a suite of platforms, with a separate CRM to keep track of communications with all their stakeholders.

The potential for data loss or security breach is also substantial. While many educational settings use Microsoft Teams internally, they may not have realised its potential to integrate all their communications on one platform.

Integrated CRM – keeping everything in one place

Conversant Technology offers an integrated CRM as part of its unified communications bundle, which keeps all stakeholder data in one place, accessible at a click, from the off. No matter who is accessing it from where, across campuses or working from home.

Social media messaging – improving student engagement

Students will often respond better to some platforms than others, while parents, Governors and staff require others. It is now possible to coordinate all your messaging from one place, with direct Whats’ App messages, marketing posts on college social media such as FaceBook and Instagram, SMS reminders and so forth all being coordinated in one interface.

Call routing and contact centre – the right call to the right person at the right time

Microsoft Teams isn’t just about internal calls and meetings. Geo and non-geo (on- and off-site) can all be bundled together, ensuring complete consistency in call quality, with all internal users having the same access to the same information, while inbound and outbound calls can be managed, queued and directed as appropriate on the same system.

Future-proofed, scalable and adding value

Educational settings also need to be agile, especially when campuses or departments grow, curricula change or sites are connected. Conversant’s solutions grow with you, adding and enabling users on request, while constantly updating the technology for the best possible interface, security and user experience. This also ensures an optimised return on Microsoft licence investment, saving money in the longer term.

All these unified communications solutions aid user mobility as well as student engagement – helping to create a happy and connected staff and student body, as well as assisting the setting’s QA for auditing purposes.

Working smarter with systems such as Conversant’s can have a real impact on both efficiency and productivity – and avoid end of year fatigue.

To see the solutions we implemented for Neath Port Talbot Colleges (NPTC):

NPTC Group of Colleges | Conversant Technology

For more information: Contact | Conversant Technology