Extremely fast and convenient – implementing Userlike was a real success story.
From traditional to exotic, students can choose from an almost infinite range of study programs these days. That makes deciding for the right one quite challenging. At the same time, educational institutions are competing more than ever to attract talent. To consult students and increase enrollment rates, Frankfurt School implemented Userlike live chat.
"Actually, I had been looking for a chatbot provider," recalls Florian Fürst, Team Lead Digital Media at Frankfurt School. But when he heard about Userlike, he was quickly convinced that a live chat solution was the better choice for a start. "Building a chatbot infrastructure is a costly matter. Before investing in it, we wanted to assess how students respond to chat as a contact channel."
Fürst names the importance of an online presence as "absolutely vital" for Frankfurt School. The website has become their main tool for recruiting new students. Adding live chat was a way to harness this potential.
Live chat is a service standard that people expect your company to have nowadays, like they expect you to have phone and email support.
These are the main reasons why Frankfurt School chose Userlike:
"The implementation of the chat went exceptionally fast," Fürst remembers. "The trial had gone so well that we saw no risk in taking the chat live. In total, the whole process from start to finish took less than a month."
The students accepted the chat instantly. They use it mostly for quick, short questions which they might not have addressed in a call or email. Because of the high usage, Frankfurt School quickly scaled-up their initial plan to staff the chat with 25 operators.
There’s a lower barrier to start a chat because it’s so fast and interactive. We get a lot of positive feedback from the students, saying that they appreciate getting immediate help.
Fürst explains that the chat medium is especially valuable for international students: "We’re an internationally recognized school. Therefore, we have a lot of students coming to our website who might not be fluent in German or English. For non-native speakers, chatting is much more comfortable than having to talk on the phone. Also, it can save them potential phone charges. Chat allows them to get in touch with us easily."
Frankfurt School incorporated the chat into their recruitment channel mix. They flexibly decide which channel needs more attention, like when a call takes priority. The chat is only visible on the website when there’s an agent available to answer it.
The chat topics are as diverse as Frankfurt School’s course offerings. But for each program, the recruitment team notices a pattern of questions they frequently get in the chat. Fürst illustrates that they’re using the knowledge they’re gaining with chat for a later chatbot project.
"The questions we get are highly diverse and can be difficult to answer in some cases. The chat allows us to track and categorize what people are asking, so we can build up our chatbot database."