Can WhatsApp help with management or learning in the classroom?

The communication revolution that is transforming our personal and professional lives affects education just like it does every other part of our existence. Over the past 10 years, instant messaging has grown in popularity between student groups, teachers, and students, between educational institutions and their personnel, as well as between institutions and potential customers.

Websites and emails, which were once common communication tools, were gradually replaced by social media platforms. Social media is currently losing ground to bulk sms platforms, a new competitor.

In management and instruction, mobile technology is being employed more and more in educational institutions throughout the world. In the context of both online and offline training, it gives students more options and chances. In fact, if you look online, you’ll see that using a Whatsapp chatbot for education is not exactly original.

So why bring it up now?

The easiest solution is Whatsapp Business API.

Private or public educational institutions can exercise control thanks to the official Whatsapp API. Infinite possibilities come with the authority and legitimacy of using popular messages as a business tool.

Consequently, this article will cover:

• The benefits of automated messaging for education
• Strategies to use the Whatsapp for education marketing
• How Whatsapp automation can aid in the management of Screamline education
• How Whatsapp may help connect teachers and Students
• How Whatsapp can improve education for students

WhatsApp’s Benefits for Education

Whatsapp is the primary method of private communication in the great majority of countries, with 2 billion active monthly users. Because of this, it is the perfect instrument for the education industry, from marketing to administration to instruction. Whatsapp usage in the education sector:

• enables smooth, immediate communication between teachers, educational institutions, and students, parents;
• performs well in places with poor coverage;
• provides a low-cost option for institutions and regions with scarce resources;
• fosters connections and learning outside of the classroom and creates a dynamic learning environment;
• offers a nice interface that both staff and students can use.

Using WhatsApp Business in the Education Sector

Talking in theory about anything is simple. As a result, we’ve compiled a list of real-world live chat and chatbot use cases in education, categorized into three main categories: marketing, management, and instruction.

By implementing WhatsApp to market Education

Educational institutions had to adapt due to the intense rivalry that was further fueled by the introduction of online education possibilities. In order to survive and flourish, hitherto entirely government-funded institutions that operated outside of the consumer market started to embrace the corporate mentality and its commercial practises.

People today have no issue seeing and treating education like any other market, and they want user and customer experiences worthy of their time, money, and attention. Therefore, educational institutions and organisations must advertise their brand just like any other company.

The competition and complexity of marketing tactics for educational institutions have increased throughout time. For instance, university marketing techniques are frequently constrained by severe financial restrictions, and as if that weren’t challenging enough, they must continually target completely different groups (students and parents).

Students, parents, and teachers all search the internet for information, looking at everything from government websites to peer evaluations and social media. Since practically every player has a sizable online presence, it might be challenging to distinguish out. The Whatsapp Business API offers educational institutions a new communication channel that, in contrast to the others, is far more intimate and much less congested.

Here are examples of feasible Whatsapp applications for lead generation and education marketing.

1. Generating leads

Even though instant messaging is a widely used form of communication, few universities have fully tapped into its potential for student recruiting.

Prospective students and their parents are starved for greater human connections offered by direct, two-way communication after being inundated with commercial messages on the internet and on every social media platform.

Information may be obtained and shared with ease thanks to IM’s intimacy and practicality.

Why not send prospective students to Whatsapp instead of asking them to exchange their email for electronic content like course descriptions and curricula via your landing pages, online marketing, or even flyers?

As a result, you will obtain a phone number in place of email and have access to prospects on a channel that they frequently check, enabling you to not only create but also nurture leads.

2. Lead Credentialing

Lead qualification comes after lead acquisition.

Who is this individual? Student? Parent? Advisor to students? What stage of the purchase funnel are they in? Do they already know what direction to go in? Are they still on the fence? Are they learning about your organization/center/agency for the first time, or have they heard of it before (maybe even taking a course with you)?

Normally, to get all of this information, you would have to fill out an online form or speak with a live agent.

By employing an interface that not only feels natural to your prospects but also frees them from the desktop, you can use Whatsapp API to build a bot that will handle all of that work for you.

That’s not all, though. Because they are conversational in nature and can respond to input in real-time, bots give you the ability to customise each customer’s experience based on their responses. By doing so, you may guarantee relevancy and efficiency and prevent wasting anyone’s time with content they are already familiar with.

3. Publicity campaigns

Sometimes prospective clients aren’t quite ready to convert. Nevertheless, you shouldn’t throw away these leads. After all, whether it be a course, a workshop, or an entire degree, they have expressed interest in your offering.

To stay in touch, send frequent updates about events, news, and novelties, or maintain their interest with rich media material, utilise Whatsapp. This is your chance to be imaginative and reconnect with your customers in a way that social media marketing campaigns could never provide.

4. Relationship and Customer Retention Management

Like any other business sector, the education industry must deal with and attempt to reduce customer churn. Relationship marketing thus appears to be quite important because it aids businesses in creating the kind of connections that are necessary for customer loyalty and retention.

The quality of the institution’s services as viewed by its student clients is, according to research, the most important factor in determining student retention. Numerous elements of loyalty, such as perceived value, trust, and emotional commitment, are greatly influenced by perceived quality. It’s crucial to emphasise that quality cannot just be assessed using objective criteria, but also by the student’s definition of what quality is to them.

You may offer individualised services at scale by using Whatsapp to manage student relationships and, consequently, retention. Additionally, it guarantees that students experience a consistent “presence” on a reliable channel.

By checking in on students frequently, keeping them informed of events and happenings without pressuring them to get more involved or aware of other opportunities and support available, for instance, using Whatsapp in higher education can help prevent dropouts.

5. Reengagement After Study

Once your clients complete the class or course they registered for, marketing’s job isn’t over.

Your former students are your strongest advocates. Their successes and accomplishments serve as a tangible example of how your educational efforts have paid off. It doesn’t matter what you teach or how you teach it. It makes no difference if they received their entire degree from your company, passed a rigorous leadership course, mastered a second language, or acquired a set of manual skills. You can benefit from regular and close contact with your alumni if you:

• Ensure repeat business
• Assisting current students (internships, career counselling)
• Improve teaching effectiveness (feedback)
• Boost your reputation with word-of-mouth advertising
• Obtain financial support through networking or donations. 

Whatsapp also makes it simple to keep former students informed of events they participated in.

Implementing WhatsApp to Manage Education

Like any other business, whether online or off, educational organizations, centers, institutes, and agencies deal with a variety of administrative and managerial operations. None of the classroom instruction or learning would be possible without it.

Integration of the Whatsapp Business API enables educational organizations of all shapes and sizes to digitalize the majority of the critical procedures in a way that is up-to-date, practical, and most importantly, natural.

1. Application Method

Both your employees and potential students may find the administrative portion of the application process to be highly burdensome. Paper-based processes take longer and are considerably more prone to mistakes.

Whatsapp can be used by higher education institutions to update candidates on the progress of their application, quickly request missing information, or even set up in-person interviews when necessary.

Even smaller businesses like language schools can effectively evaluate candidates’ proficiency by having them respond to a few questions and send an audio recording of their pronunciation over Whatsapp, which will then be sent to the appropriate teacher for review. This speeds up the procedure and saves both the teacher and the applicant time.

2. Enrolment & Registration

The enrollment procedure begins after a request is granted.

Registration for new students can be very stressful. Most of the time, all new students must be processed and enrolled prior to the start of the course. 

The majority of the information and document copies can be submitted by students via discussion with your Whatsapp bot, which can quickly save the submitted information in your main system, be it a sophisticated intranet or Google Spreadsheet. This can streamline the process.

3. FAQs & Student Support Services

Your workshop participants or students will require assistance with a variety of challenges throughout the term of the course. It can deal with anything, from administrative and legal matters to housing-related, health, and monetary concerns.

You may eliminate pointless barriers to communication with students by using Whatsapp API.

How?

by enabling students to access the messaging app whenever and wherever they want to get quick answers to frequently asked questions.

A chatbot can handle addressing fundamental questions and issues about programs, visas, tuition fees, payments, financial aid, tests, certificates, counseling, career advice, etc.

The benefit of the Whatsapp chatbot is that you may configure the system to start a handoff between a chatbot and a human in the event that the problem is too complicated and the bot is unable to assist the learner.

That indicates that a member of your staff will be asked to join the conversation and offer guidance on the current problem. The bot can also suggest setting up a meeting or phone call for the student if there isn’t a staff member present.

4. Timetable Updates

Scheduling is one of the biggest headaches for educational institutions. The timetables need to work for students, teachers, and (if the study takes place offline) the spaces you have available.

Whatsapp is a fantastic tool for sharing the course schedule and for sending immediate updates regarding last-minute modifications, cancellations, or rescheduling issues. In comparison to email, instant messages are significantly more likely to be checked by a typical student. Due to this, Whatsapp is the ideal platform for sending urgent information.

5. Publications & Notifications

Whatsapp is the ideal platform for disseminating news and announcements because of its HSMs (Highly Structured Messages).

The messages can be used to advertise academic and social events, one-time seminars, new courses, student, teacher, and organization success stories, or simply to notify staff or students about significant issues.

6. Extracurricular Activities & Clubs

We briefly touched on the significance of overseeing the student-provider connection and satisfying each student’s unique views of quality in the section on educational marketing. An essential component of that equation is the social component of the educational experience.

Whatsapp can be used in education in two different ways to encourage participation in clubs and extracurricular activities:

• Notifications, interactive
• group conversations

The notifications make sure that your pupils are immediately and effectively informed of or reminded of the options and possibilities. Additionally, you can use the pre-scheduled messages to generate interest because a bot can follow any of them.

However, Whatsapp Business API enables YOUR organisation to designate official group chats for certain student groups. It’s ideal for setting up club meetings and fostering a sense of neighbourhood.

When you create a group, you get to choose the group administrator, so you can be sure that someone in control is responsible and upholding accepted social norms.

7. Registrations, Signups, and Cancellations

We’ve already mentioned how simple it is to make various announcements using Whatsapp. You can go a little further, though, if you’re publicising events or occasions that call for registration or enrollment.

Simply reply to the message if you’re interested in reserving a spot at the webinar or special lecture. or, if further information is required, the responder can start a bot to gather the required sign-up data.

Even better, Whatsapp makes it simpler to confirm attendance and track no-shows.

You can eliminate no-shows and market last-minute seats for those who might be interested by sending out a straightforward message asking for attendees to confirm their attendance and making it simple for them to submit that confirmation.

8. Feedback Collection

It’s no secret that collecting feedback is the best way to ensure the satisfaction of your customers as well as identify the points of difficulty. However, not many people take time to complete surveys as they can be quite a drag.

Hence, if you want anyone to care, your survey should make it as easy as possible on its subjects.

You may easily conduct the survey over Whatsapp given the option to develop chatbots. The bot can quickly transfer the responses to a specified database or spreadsheet after gathering them as part of a natural discussion. As a result, your students can complete the survey whenever they want, anywhere—even while getting a coffee or waiting for a bus.