Cloud telephony helps connect better

Education is 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 largely 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 accessibility through calls much easier. It not only eases out the process of reaching to the concerned educational institution but also enables educators to reach the students easily.

Just a call away

The advancement of cloud telephony makes it easier for students to access education through online modes as well. Now, both teachers and
education are just a call away. Enquiring about any important exam date to learning about any particular subject, there is a helpline number for everything.

Today, cloud telephony has transforming how students and parents reach out to the educators. Many online learning applications are using the benefits of cloud telephony for providing helpline numbers so that no important information should be missed.

Cloud telephony definitely digitally revolutionised the education sector. This was required 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 department concerned 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.

Manually handling each application coming from numerous students across the world is extremely difficult for educational institutions. It requires a huge amount of time and effort to sort out these applications and send them to the departments concerned.

Now, few executives are hired to attend the calls and it is a hectic and challenging task for them. As a result, a significant number of calls often get missed.

Cloud telephony helps these education institutions majorly in upgrading their overall communication channels by enabling students and parents to reach out to the concerned departments easily on time.

When interactive voice response (IVR) technology came into the picture, it reduced human effort while helping students in easily enquiring about the exam schedule or accessing any important information which earlier used to take a significant amount of time to access.

Another situation wherein the need for such a service arises is when institutions have to notify students and parents at the last minute about a sudden change in timings, holidays, etc. Manually texting or calling each student involves lot of effort and cost. Also, the inaccuracy in the conventional method will result in parents, students still remaining unaware of the last-minute change causing unnecessary troubles.

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.

Moreover, it helped education departments to reach out to the students easily. They are able to send pre-recorded IVR messages or guide students via phone calls or SMS.

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

Toll-free customer care number like 1800 conveys a professional and bigger brand image in front of your potential customers. It enhances customer-calling experience significantly by connecting 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. 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.

The digital age has led to a paradigm shift in most facets of the way we live our lives. Fueled by the internet, we are now firmly in an era where the ‘Internet Of Things’ (IOT) has a profound and transformative impact on the world and its people. This immense effect has been felt across sectors, spheres, both personal as well as professional. The world of education too has been metamorphosed with the advent of the IOT.

(The writer is founder, MyOperator)