When Students Won't Answer the Phone

An Indianapolis college turns to a cloud messaging service from Webtext to support texting on DID lines.

As discussed previously on No Jitter, text-enabling traditional — and typically widely published — landline and toll-free phone numbers is a relatively new capability. But in an April briefing with Webtext CEO and Founder AJ Cahill and his brother Michael, commercial officer, I learned how higher education has become a burgeoning vertical market for this company’s cloud messaging service.

As one example, the Cahills put me in touch with Harrison College, an Indianapolis school that has been using the cloud messaging service. Joe Meadors, senior vice president, information services and facilities at Harrison, agreed to discuss the college’s experience with me.

Meadors opened our conversation by saying that Harrison required no lengthy study of the merits of enabling text messages for students. “We get better responses from our students using text than via email or phone calls. It didn’t require a study — it was apparent.”

In the absence of a college-deployed solution, administrative staff were often using alternate, consumer-based applications to communicate with students. What it needed was a way to text with students that ensured privacy, security, and an ability to record and track interactions.

I asked Meadors how he learned about Webtext. A strong player in its native Ireland, with very large local government contracts, the company increasingly finds its new customers and revenue in North America. Still, Webtext doesn’t have the brand reach of many of the firms discussed regularly here on No Jitter. Meadors response? “We did our homework.”

Meadors put a network engineer who works with the college’s Cisco Communications Manager on the project, and he came back with Webtext. The fact that Webtext tightly integrated with Harrison’s Cisco communications applications infrastructure, including the Jabber client, was a big plus.

The Webtext solution had “even more features than we asked for,” Meadors told me. This included the ability to text-enable any direct inward dial (DID) number on campus. For Meadors this meant, “We don’t need to list a million different phone numbers.”

The primary initial use at Harrison is in allowing Student Affairs specialists and students to text each other whether using cell services or DID lines. The specialists are on the front line with students, serving as their gateway into the administration for topics such as admissions, class schedules, and financial aid.

Because Webtext integrates with the Cisco phone system, it also directly integrates with the Outlook directory. When a specialist closes an SMS session, the text gets stored in the user’s Outlook mailbox for ongoing reference. Users can even resume the interactions once they’ve been closed.

So far, the reaction among the 60 Harrison users who have been using the service has been positive, Meadors reported.

Working with Harrison and other colleges and universities, Webtext has outlined a series of additional higher education use cases:

• Campus-wide emergency broadcast to thousands of staff and students within minutes
• Notices sent to inform groups of staff or students on closures, schedule changes, weather emergencies, and so on
• Individual or group notifications of class changes: venue, cancellation, postponement
• Promotion of education and social events such as concerts, lectures, and shows
• Staff communications, including for password resets or other notices from the IT help desk; students can text MMS picture of ID, etc.

During my briefing, the Webtext executives also shared that the company is taking advantage of the chatbot capability Facebook recently announced for Messenger (see related post, The Bots Are Coming). They showed me an early demonstration of the Webtext integration into Facebook Messenger using the available APIs.

Because Webtext has hooks into both Cisco and Avaya enterprise communications and contact center applications, the Webtext Facebook Messenger integration will allow companies to easily add Facebook Messenger as an additional interaction channel. While college-aged millennials might not have too much need for the Webtext-Facebook integration, their boomer and Gen X parents are more likely to embrace it.

Article via www.nojitter.com

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