We’ve seen a real uptake of universities using our one-to-one live chat during the busy Clearing period.
Most of our clients implemented one-to-one live chats to give students another way to connect with them, so it often ran alongside traditional phone enquiries but also their newer social media channels like Facebook.
But what’s great about our clients is how they often think outside the box and really embrace using live chat in a variety of ways to better engage with their audience.
To make things easier, we put together a handy list of how our clients are using one-to-one chats throughout Clearing.
Making offers
Using our technology to make offers, clients asked relevant questions during one-to-one chat sessions, they then input students’ details into their CRM to create offers.
Applying tags to each conversation also allowed clients to report on chats at the end of the day and view useful analytics such as how many offers had been made and what course the student had enquired about.
Peer-to-peer engagement
The universities who had asked their student ambassadors to host one-to-one chats were able to offer advice on all manner of things from completing the online application form to providing links to course entry requirements. It also provided a communication point when phone lines were engaged.
Plug-in button
A number of our university clients have implemented our free plug-in API that creates a live chat button directly on their website, giving students visiting the relevant pages on the university website direct access to live chats.
Generally, we saw an increase in conversations on the day for clients using the plug-in over those who promoted the chats in other ways.
Integration
As well as using the data reporting functionality on the Meet & Engage platform, we’ve also integrated with a handful of university CRMs.
This has allowed clients to create Single Sign-On emails and send them to interested ‘would-be’ students with ease, directing them towards their one-to-one live chats hosted on the Meet & Engage platform.
Teams can also download a bespoke report at the end of each day and upload onto their CRM to update the details of each enquiry.
As a whole, it’s been hugely encouraging to see the success of one-to-one chats for our Higher Education clients and shows that the generation applying to university today see live chat as a standard way of communicating with an institution.
Here’s some feedback that our clients received after using one-to-one chat during clearing:
“This way of chatting online is so useful.”
“I was helped by [name removed] and she was great and sorted my problem. With live chat it was instant with no waiting in a long line of phone callers. Brilliant idea that works.”
“Very quick and detailed response.”
If you’d like to find out more about Meet & Engage and how it could be used to support your student marketing or careers service teams, feel free to give us a call on +44 (0)20 3384 5058 or contact Sarah, our Higher Education expert at sarah.brown@meetandengage.com
