K12 customer service may not be tracked by state assessments and other accountability measures but it can be a pass-fail test for your district as far as parents are concerned. And the fact that some families are also confused may be your fault: one-third of parents surveyed said they don’t know who to contact or where to go when they have questions or are seeking a specific program, according to a new report by K12 Insight, which provides customer service solutions for school leaders.
One-third may not sound like a high number but in a district of 30,000 students that could mean about 10,000 families left in the dark or sending errant emails or leaving misdirected voicemails, the report points out. “If parents don’t know where to go for questions, they are highly likely to have a negative opinion about your district,” the report warns. “It also raises concerns about how reachable your district really is to the community.”
When parents connect with the school employee who can answer their questions they are likely to share their satisfaction by giving the district a higher “net promoter score,” which can have a positive impact on maintaining enrollment, among other benefits. Two of the most impactful steps in improving communications are to reduce the number of people whom a parent needs to reach to resolve their problem and ensure that all contacts are courteous.
“When the number of times a parent contacts a district about academics or behaviors increases, parent perceptions regarding the courteousness of those conversations with a school or district decreases,” K12 Insight points out.
Some keys to K12 customer service
One of the most glaring K12 customer service roadblocks is that many districts don’t provide clear or consistent paths for parents seeking help. And when parents looking for answers wind up in the wrong place, that puts more burden on the school employees who have to redirect them, the report cautions.
The good news is that around three-quarters of parents say they “often” or “always” receive a courteous response when they contact their schools about academic or behavioral issues. Those satisfaction rates decline, however, among parents who report contacting their schools more frequently, the report adds.
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“This data suggests that with more frequent touchpoints or interactions with school districts come lower percentages of families perceiving their interactions to be satisfactorily courteous,” the report says. “Those who engage with a school district once are getting their issue resolved with one contact with the school … or none if they can resolve their matter on their own.”
K12 Insight recommends taking two big steps:
- Make it extremely clear where parents will get the most responsive and complete resolution to their inquiry.
- Communications procedures and platforms should reduce the workload for teachers and staff.
Surprisingly, perhaps, more than half of parents said they’d rather connect with a chatbot than a real person when it comes to accessing students’ grades or report cards, bus service disruptions, absences, school closures and a few other topics. Most still prefer to talk to a live employee about student academic
performance, behavior, special education services and concerns about teachers.
“The staff time saved per campus through self-service tools can be redirected to providing more personalized service to parents with such needs on more complex issues,” the report concludes.
