The Cleveland Metropolitan School District has a new customer service platform to improve how they communicate with you and how you feel about that interaction. When you visit the district’s homepage, you see the orange tab on the right, "contact us.”
Once you click it, you’re using Let’s Talk, the district’s new customer service platform.
You can choose to interact with the AI-generated chatbot to get real-time feedback and information the district has sourced and preloaded. Or you can share a message via email with different prompts to help direct your inquiry.
“Once you submit a question in Let's Talk, that dialogue gets routed to the right person and then the right person gets to respond back to you within 24 hours,” said Krista Coleman, K12 Insight chief customer officer.
Virginia-based K12 Insight said its software makes it easy for any student, employee, parent or guardian, or community member to ask questions and receive accurate responses within 24 hours.
For Cleveland, you can also toggle between several different languages, and in the end, you can rate your experience.
“It really is about school districts are wanting to make sure that they have their hand on the pulse of school climate,” said Krista Coleman, K12 Insight's chief customer officer. “How are people really feeling in their school district?”
The software also allows the district to see and chart who is reaching out to them, why, frequency, satisfaction, and more data that helps them create a more efficient and curated experience that benefits both the user and the district.
K12 Insight says it serves more than 500 districts nationwide, including Indianapolis Public Schools, Pittsburgh Public School District, and Philadelphia City School District.
It says good customer service helps districts retain students and staff amid growing student needs, teacher burnout, health, safety and security demands and school choice programs.
Serving more than 36,000 students, CMSD is like a city within a city, says Shirrell Greene-Joe, director of customer experience for the district. And she says every voice matters and wants those they serve to know about Let’s Talk.
“We want them to know that this tool is there,” said Greene-Joe. “That we are listening, and we want to hear from them.”
CMSD says this is a direct result of community listening sessions and part of a decade-long effort to improve their customer experience.
The district did a soft launch of Let’s Talk last year within a few departments. It is now on all school campuses.
Greene-Joe says they have more than 200 staff trained on the software.
“We’re so excited about the feedback that they can tell us how we’re doing, and for us, that’s what we’re watching,” said Greene-Joe. “The data behind that, that we can continue to say, ‘How do we move this needle to build trust, to enhance and increase communications, to ensure that families are having a stellar CMSD experience.”
K12 Insight says that, to date, the district has received about 3,600 dialogues, with an average customer service score of 7.6 and an average response time of 0.6 days, which is within their goal of 24 hours.
The company says pricing varies by the size of the district and generally runs about $4.50-$5 per student, with discounts offered for contracts with multiple-year terms.
