Transcript
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The High Red Marketer podcast is sponsored
by the ZEMI APP enabling colleges and universities
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to engage interested students before they even
apply. You are listening to the Higher
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Ed Marketer, a podcast geared towards
marketing professionals in higher education. This show
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will tackle all sorts of questions related
to student recruitment, donor relations, marketing
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trends, new technologies and so much
more. If you are looking for conversations
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centered around where the industry is going, this podcast is for you. Let's
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get into the show. Welcome to
another episode of the Higher Ed Marketer podcast.
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My Self Choice Singer from thing patented. Each week, partners with Bart
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Kaylor of Kaylor solutions to bring you
conversations with higher ed marketers that we feel
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the entire higher ed marketer community can
benefit from. Today we talked to Ben
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Conglington from O lark about live chat
solutions for Higher Ed Marketing and how it
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can work for your college. Yeah, Ben does a great job of kind
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of explaining the benefits of of live
chat. I think we all have experience
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with customer service and and doing different
things online and leveraging live chat solutions,
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whether you're doing an order with lands
end or, you know, any other
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ecommerce platform. We're pretty familiar with
that. But live chat is something that
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a lot of schools have implemented.
Yet a lot of, I think,
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misconception about it are out there,
and so ben does a good job of
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kind of deconstructing some of that,
helping us to understand a little bit about
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what the what the common allees between
those solutions are, as well as just
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to kind of De mystify a little
bit the difference between, you know,
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live human chat versus what what's being
known as chat bots, and so I
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think this is a great episode for
anyone who's looking at ways to better service
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their their audiences, whether it's enrollment, whether it's development, whether it's,
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you know, internal students. There's
a lot of really good conversation around that.
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Today here's our conversation with Ben from
O Lark. It's our pleasure to
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welcome been congleton to the High Reed
Marketer podcast. He is the CEO of
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o Lark, which is a live
chat solution for Higher Ed marketers and before
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we get into the advantages and some
of the best use cases for live chat
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solutions, would love for you,
been, to introduce yourself in. How
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did you come up with this wonderful
solution for higher in? Yeah, absolutely
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so. I'm I'm been congleton.
See You and cofounder old Ark. I've
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been sort of building software, and
this is entrepreneur for about thirteen years.
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I've started all ARC basically leaving a
PhD program at the University of Michigan.
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So I have I don't know,
I have a deep, deep higher ed
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roots. It's exciting to it's likely
to be here. My Dad's professor,
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my sisters a professor, my brother
in law's a professor. So, like
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a I read, is a place
that I feel very comfortable in and so
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I guess your question was sort of
like how do we how do we get
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this thing moving? How do we
get this started? Yeah, and maybe
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you're beginnings. Yeah, yeah,
sure. So the beginnings, the early,
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early beginnings, is, you know, I actually, you know,
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used to run, used to run
a webhost and company like in the in
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the in the early and the mid
S, and back then the best way
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to communicate with the customers on our
website was via chat. And in the
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mid S, you know, company
kind of bought our our live chat provider
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and then sort of shut down the
SB product and moved it do a fortune
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five hundred product, and we searched
around in serf and searching, search,
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and we could not find anything that
really worked for sort of our small teams.
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You know, there wasn't designed for
like fortune five hundred call centers.
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Fast forward two thousand and nine.
You know, I'm working on this PhD.
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I'm sitting, I'm sitting in a
PhD seminar class, reading a reading
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article by Shosama Zubrav I remember this
about this intermediation and your thinking, thinking
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like you know what like if everyone's
going to start selling and you know,
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moving all commerce to the web,
how are we going to going to communicate?
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And and I look back at my
time and in two thousand, you
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know, the Earl in the mid
S and you know, thought like okay,
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like, you know, chat work
pretty well for us, but it
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seemed to just go fortune, fortune
hundred one to like att and comcast,
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like what happened everyone else. And
I looked around and there wasn't really a
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solution out there, like for non
giant call centers. And you know,
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as a learned a lot. You
know, I've got a computer science degree
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at a business degree. Was Work
on this PhD and I was like,
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you know, I think we could
maybe build the thing that like we needed
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ten years ago, and we started
building it. Some of our earliest customers
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were university libraries and university professors.
That wasn't never this lie the best use
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case, but it we start off
there and then started seeing a lot of
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e commerce businesses use US, governments
and software companies and the company kind of
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exploded and grew from there. Isn't
that fascinating that, you know? You
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know, I talked to you in
the pre interview a little bit about the
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idea that I remember back in the
S, you know, we were using
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ICQ, I think it was some
kind of little, you know, messaging
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software, and that was kind of
you know, people are using AOL and
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all kinds of things at that time, and it's funny how, you know,
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it kind of went away for a
while, as you said, kind
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of went big corporate and now it's
coming back and it's funny that, you
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know, my son who he's twenty
two now, he wasn't born until one
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thousand nine hundred and ninety ninet two
thousand. You know, I think that
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messaging is kind of their natural,
natural way of going about things, and
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so I think it's fascinating. It's
kind of come full circle. But now,
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especially post pandemic, I mean talk
a little bit about that. I
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mean I'm sure a lot of things
have happened during the pandemic that kind of
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required even more of this type of
need. Yeah, it was was pretty
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fascinating, right like. I think
a lot of us kind of grew up,
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my generation grew up like SMS,
texting, friends, etc. Now
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you have facebook Messager, you know. Now you have people using instagram messaging
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on the side. You know,
ticktock, like short rapid text communication right
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like, is happening constantly, having
everywhere. And what's interesting to me is,
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you know, we've worked of highed
for many years, but you know,
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around the beginning of the pandemic we
started to see like a lot more
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demand for this kind of solution.
I think a lot of it was that
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there's a lot of systems it were
built for in person communication. The just
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broke down when everyone was was remote, and so we see a saw,
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you know, quite a few universities
reaching out to us, probably early two
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thousand etc. And some of our
existing customers were say like hey, how
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else can you help us. Like
we know, we've been working with you
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got for for a while and and
through that process I looked at the space
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a lot more. I started,
you know, talking more deeply to our
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higher ard customers and understanding, you
know, some of the challenges they were
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facing. And I don't know,
I got excited because, you know,
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I now could go kind of bring
those Thanksgiving dinner time conversations back to,
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you know, what I get to
do every day. And so we saw
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people like, okay, like,
you know, we aren't doing campus stores
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anymore, like how do we how
do we engage with with students who are
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browsing our websites is maybe their first
interaction with us as a school? Or
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like, okay, we have some
admitted students, but they're not on campus
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right now. For example. You
know, university organ start off using US
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in both admissions and housing, and
what they learned is basically, when someone
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gets there, their housing set up
there, they're going to show up,
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like the summer melt is like not
a factor once they have a place to
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stay. And so they started putting
our a's and some of their housing groups
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on chat and so it's been interesting
to kind of watch, you know,
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this sort of customer service focus that
we saw happen in e commerce and in
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service businesses move into universities when most
of the interaction is happening via the website,
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like the basically your enrollment yield funnel
has a huge fees of it.
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That is people interacting with the website, not picking up the phone, and
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that's been kind of exciting problem to
work on because I've been working on that
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problem and in B tob for a
long time and now it's kind of come
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full circle. It's it's pretty exciting. It is really exciting and I think
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it's interesting. We've you know,
we've got a guess coming up in a
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couple weeks with Stephenie guy are from. She used to be at RNL and
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so she was kind of the author
of e expectations report and their most recent
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one last year. was saying that, you know, the website is the
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number one place a students go to
find out information about starting a college and
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it's a number one place two people
go to decide on the content. Is
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What that drives them and make their
decision, even beyond you know, the
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counselors and everybody else, and so
I think it's so important to realize what
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tools can we put on that website
where everybody's already going to make that as
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frictionless as possible, and I love
the idea that chat is one of those
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tools because we're so used to it. I mean we go to any other,
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you know, ecommerce platform and like
Oh, I've got a problem,
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I'm going to click on the chat
and I'm going to type and talk to
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somebody and get it solved, because
I don't want to I don't want to
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hang out on hold for three hours
and I don't want to not get my
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problem solved and I'm not going to
I'm not going to email somebody and wait
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three days. I just want to
get it taken care of and and I
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love the fact that human chat can
do that. Yeah, absolutely, in
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genes. He's not going to pick
up the phone when have question, like,
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you know, browsing your website.
They're not going to they're not going
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to post a message in your facebook
group right, and they're unlikely going to
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send you an email. So I
think like the point is you need to
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be there where where the person is, whether they're on a mobile device or
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whether they're, you know, sitting
in front of their computer on a tablet.
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You need need, you need to
be there so you're not interrupting flow,
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so that you can just sort of
help people move through, right through
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that journey. I think you're exactly
right on that. With that, there
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are a couple of different chat solutions
out there. Your platform is a live
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chat solution, but they're also what
people commonly refer to as Bots, and
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I'm sure their advantages and disadvantages to
them both. But if you can kind
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of help us think do that and
point some of those out and go into
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this discussion for others that are maybe
contemplating making a decision of a chat solution
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and then your future. Yeah,
I think that's that's a really good question
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and I think there's a big trend
right of seeing seeing chat bots like kind
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of a I would call it,
basically just adding automation to some sort of
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workflow. We saw this happen in
kind of calling up comcasts or eighteen team
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many years ago, when you got
these deep phone trees and had a lot
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of questions. You're starting to see
more of this happen on websites in the
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reason this happens is because in general, sales people are very good at selling
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a solution that's like hey, Ai
will answer all your questions, you don't
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have to staff this, you don't
need people anymore. And it's a lot
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easier for someone to say yes,
give me that thing, I don't need
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to spend money on people, I
don't need staff, I don't need to
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staff it. Then it is to
say, okay, let me figure out
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the system. This is going to
provide incredible service to the people that that
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are that I'm trying to serve.
So if you're like, you know,
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a small liberal arts college and you're
thinking like okay, like, I can
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just put this little Bot thing on
here and I'll answer everyone's questions, that
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seems a lot easier than figuring out, you know, how you work with
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marketing, how you work with your
admissions team, how you work with other
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parts of your school to actually provide
incredible service and answer questions that the students
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might have. So it's so like
the story is compelling about why people might
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choose that. The challenge, I
think, with bought only or peer bought
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is that most of the reason,
most of the time that people reach out
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and want to communicate with some of
that institution it's when they have an exceptional
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case and it's when, like they
are trying to get something deeper than a
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question that they could ask Google or
a question that they could ask Sirie.
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And you could think about Siri is
kind of like some of the best ai
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out there, or Alexa or you
know these virtual assistants, and imagine how
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much money like Amazon and Google will
and Microsoft for spending developing these personal assistants
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and think about all their shortcomings.
So I think you know, bots butts
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are useful and we do some of
that that natural language processing. You know
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bought automation stuff, but my story
is always been as a school, you're
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basically trying to create belonging and you're
trying to stand out from everyone else that
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is in that in that playing field. So you're not trying to commoditize the
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interaction with your institution viewer website.
We are trying to do is automate away
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some of the really simple things,
maybe some of the simple Google query style
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questions, and then get over to
someone who can deal with the nuance and
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really express to that student or the
perspective student what makes you guys different.
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Like you know how you're able to
help someone move through a complicated financial aid
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process or how you're able to,
you know, answer a couple questions,
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you know in that application process,
that reassure them that you know you're going
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to be there for them once they
show up at the institution and you're not
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just handing them a Bot that refers
them to a phone tree or an email
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address, which I've seen done so
many times and it's just disappointing. It
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really is. And I find myself, I know I've I love Amazon.
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I've been an Amazon. You know, they now tell you Amazon you know
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customers, since for me it was
like nineteen ninety five thousand nine hundred and
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ninety six, and I really like
it. But the thing that frustrates everything
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of about it is that when I
have a question about something and I go
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to their customer support, it does
do the automated bought and half the time
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I've already done all the research to
figure out what I need. I'm going
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to the Bott I'm going to the
chat because I can't find it on my
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own. I mean most people,
I think, are pretty self sufficient and
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I think the challenge in customer service, whether it's Amazon or whether it's anybody
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else is is making it so that
the customer feels good about their experience with
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you at the end of the day, and right now, I never have
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felt good about the experience that I've
had with Amazon because I just goes in
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circles and you'll finally you might get
someplace where you get down to somewhere that
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you actually get a human on there, but it takes forever. And I
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know that they do that because call
centers cost money. They charge based on
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the minute, based on the engagement, and so I understand that. But
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from a college standpoint, like you
said, from a liberal arts, small
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medium size school, we can't afford
to do that. I mean we've got
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to be we've got to be living
our brand out all the way down to
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the way that we do chat and
if we are selling, you know,
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if we see on the page,
Hey, we're all about community, you're
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not a number here all this,
but yet click on this chat bought and
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we're going to make you a number. We're kind of against the brand on
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that. And so I love the
idea that you guys are leveraging ai when
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it makes sense, but it's not
replacing that human relationship and I think it's
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one of the dangerous and I'm guessing
you do too. Yeah, absolutely,
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I mean it's I think, you
know, we think about, you know,
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old arks philosophy and how we sort
of approached Bots, for example,
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like we've always, you know,
we've been thirteen years and and the live
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chat industry and the live chat business. So we've built the you know,
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very robust, very robust solution to
help that, you know, route to
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the right person. So, for
example, we've done work with slate recently
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and that's been pretty exciting, where
where we can route to the admissions counselor
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assigned to the person, the student
when they come on ask a question or,
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you know, really really thinking about
like that, that you know,
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complete experience of like, you know, knowing other communication that someone has with
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the student when they come in,
come into chat. I think there's a
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lot of options to sort of think
about this holistic experience for the student that
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really is trying to trying to create
that that belonging, and Ai Automation is
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a piece of that, but it's
not it's not the full solution. I've
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called maybe twenty percent of the solution. Yeah, well, and I like
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what you've saying there, because I
mean, let's let's talk a little bit
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about some of the features and accessibility
that go into into chat solutions and I
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think that, you know, I
full transparency. I've partnered with O Lark
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and a couple clients and and have
helped them implement a live chat solution and
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been very pleased with that. And
I know that I was part of a
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Beta test group on on your mobile
APP, I think, you know,
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eighteen months ago or so. And
so just help people understand, because I
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think sometimes there's misconceptions that well,
if we have a chat, somebody got
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to be tied to their desktop,
you know, two, seven. Let's
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talk through that a little bit of
what does that look like for an admissions
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team? Yeah, so I think
what you're talking about like, in particulars
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maybe staffing, and I think staffing
as ultimately like one of the one of
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the biggest objections, like how am
I actually going to going to staff this?
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And I think there's a couple things
to keep in mind. Like many,
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many places already picking up the phone
when people call. They don't get
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very many phone calls, but there
is people whose job it is to answer
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the phone when the phone rings,
and you can think of. Chat is
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sort of in a similar way,
like if you have staff or even a
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like a small call center of any
form. Chat's a good option there because
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you can imagine that now, rather
than just doing like one phone call of
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one person, you can chat with
maybe two or three people at the same
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time be fairly responsive. Generally speaking, we see a lot of like work
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study students used here kind of,
and admissions counselors are a's sort of more
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kind of student employees, I think
are very common to sort of work on.
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That medium gives you flexible hours,
it lets you kind of design around
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people's schedules in a way that like
some of the other you know, on
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campus jobs also do, but maybe
not as much into the evenings. But
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additionally, like when someone's not there, you don't need to staff at seven.
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You don't staff much of anything seven
at a university, right. And
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and there's no reason you need to
staff chat. I mean you can hide
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it when you're not there, you
can make an email contact form. There's
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many options and that's pretty industry standard. Right. Very, very, very
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few places that are not normously large
or staff things seven. Let's talk a
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little bit about that idea. Of
using students, because sometimes, and I'm
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just kind of reflecting back to you
things I've heard about it when I've talked
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about life chat, it's like,
well, students really don't know they answers
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to those questions. But I think
your tools and a lot of tools,
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you can actually pre kind of preconfigure
some some typical answers to the typical questions
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so that there's at least a something
to get started on. Is that?
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Is that accurate? Yeah, well, I think, yeah, you can
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obviously have shortcuts and hints and things
like that, but I also, you
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know, I think thinking about it
in two ways. Right. One,
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there are some basic questions where you're
just building trust, right. These are
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basic questions where, like a human
is going to be better at engaging and
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having that backforth dialog than, you
know, a Bot. And then there's
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also the opportunity to sort of transfer
between departments. So, for example,
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if you are, you know,
having a conversation with admissions, in many
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cases admissions is not understand all the
intricacies of financially and even like, you
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know, the employees into emissions team, the counselors like that, are that
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are trained and do this stuff every
every you know, enrollment period. So
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so the ability to kind of transfer
over to an expert another department, I
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think, is a key the key
feature to kind of help continue to conversation
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and get questions answered. And you
can imagine that happening within moving from,
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you know, admissions to housing or
moving from you know, kind of a
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cross cross organization. Yeah, and
I speaking of that. That's been another
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one of the concerns that have been
brought up to me as the fact of
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you know, I might be talking
to the admissions team about how important is
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to have chat from an enrollment standpoint. I mean, I'm a big believer.
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If you've know anything about me,
you'll hear me talking about everything in
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your marketing needs to be from an
enrollment focus first, and so the the
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website needs to be enrollment focused and
all that. So I would even say
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chat needs to be enrollment focused as
much as possible first. But then I
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always hear people say, well,
okay, we'll do that, but as
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soon as I put, you know, the chat on the home page for
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enrollment, I'm going to get six
people asking me about their red about their
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transcripts. What do I do?
And and so tell me. I mean,
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obviously you've got bigger schools like University
of Oregon. Well, how are
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they handling that type of thing?
Yeah, I would say generally speaking,
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small schools might put on their home
page and kind of look at it as
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sort of like you know, so
often times you'll staff out of registers office,
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like University of Montana, for exam, not not a small school,
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but they started off using all our
primarily in their registers office and their Dina
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students had, you know, a
lot of good things to say about you
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know, just using it as a
way of like getting things done a lot
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quicker than in person visits. But
generally speaking, because the Jack can be
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targeted right, you can. You
can deploy it in a particular piece of
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your enrollment funnel that you're trying to
optimize. And I and that's that's why
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I always like talk to most schools
that have have trafficks, like think about
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what your goal is. Right,
are you trying to increase your inquiries?
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Well, let's look at kind of
the pages on your on your website that
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sort of lead towards that inquiry funnel
and let's like maybe make it a little
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easier to get that first touch point
kind of help you guys stand out a
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little bit. You have an online
campus tour option like, for example,
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we recently partnered with student bridge,
you know online the campus tour provider,
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to, you know, make sure
that they could, you know, answer
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questions in real time via that that
platform that they've built. So I think
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thinking about your funnel, thinking about
the pages in that funnel where you're trying
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to move someone through it. So
you know, inquiries, high high intent
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pages on the website that that lead
towards inquiries application completion. You know,
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obviously you can, you can bet
it inside of the slate application experience if
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they're use if they're not using common
APP. You can also imagine like,
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okay, like post Sedman. Okay, what are the sort of resources and
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website materials that people are navigating post
admit? Let's let's embed chat there,
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let's, you know, try to
understand the questions people are asking and move
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people through that piece of the funnel. And you can kind of even look
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at that. And the student success
side, for example, we had UVA
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using US for their career so center
for just like career advising, because it
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was a way of like simplifying the
ability for people to ask quick questions,
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get resume reviews and sort of do
that type of activity. So you can
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kind of think about chat as like, yes, like we all communicate,
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we all talk. Well, you
know they're but but I think you can
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think about it more strategic way of
saying, like, okay, like let's
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look at the student, the entire
student in journey from perspective to alumni,
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and let's look at the pieces inside
that journey where we could, we want,
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we might want to like gain some
information, like we want, want
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to understand what's going on at that
stage or a place where we're trying to
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move a number, like trying to
accomplish something, and let's deploy chat there,
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run some pilots, run some tests
and learn something, and I think
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that's you know, that's generally where
I like people to start. Is just
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like with a goal and we're trying
to learn something. You can deployed everywhere
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and you will learn something as well. Right, right. That's a great
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point and I love the fact that
one of the things that I learned about
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Oh Lark is that I can I
can kind of turn it on and off
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on different parts of the website or
have multiple accounts on different parts so that
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there's there's some consistency with that,
and so I think that's a I think
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that's a great solution. I also
know that your platform has provided accessibility solutions
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customized for some of your colleges that
you work with. When that comes to
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mind is Galu debt university. Could
you explain that and how that might affect
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how you move forward with solutions for
other institutions? Yeah, that's a really
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good question. I appreciate you bring
that up, Troy. So one thing
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you should know about old ark is, you know, what we are in.
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This be to be a space for
a long time. You know,
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as a as a company, we're
incorporated as a public benefit corporation around accessible
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technology and this is sort of an
area of passion for us. And is
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therea why we really like working with
the universities, because universities are some of
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our customers who care the most about
accessibility, both from like the rational sense
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that they want everyone to have access
to their university to like kind of the
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more like cultural like benefit of Likedi
wanting to to, you know, expand
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their enrollment based. So that's one
of the reasons why I'm so excited about
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higher ad but to get more more
specific, you know, when I think
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about design and building building solutions,
I think it's good to understand all of
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your all of your constraints. And
in one of our customers is gallet at
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university, and Galia University as a
lot of students who come in who their
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primary language is American sign language.
And so even though you know you can
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type back and forth using chat,
if you're hearing impaired, you still like
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might have a better time expressing yourself
using a different medium. And so one
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of the projects we're doing with them
is, you know, really thinking about
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chat as a medium that sort of
let you escalate to video conversations. So
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we're working with them to let you
leave messages in American sign language to sort
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of escalate chats into realtime video conversations
as well. And so I think,
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you know, these are the kind
of kind of benefits you get when you
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kind of try to bring everyone under
the same tent. Is it helps you
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build solutions for everyone, right,
because that that kind of solution benefits you
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know, regardless of your ability,
regardless of what university we're working with like,
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these are solutions we can bring to
them to them as well, like
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a synchronous video messaging escalation to video
call have but I think if you look
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at through the lens of trying to
bring more people into the tent and working
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with, you know, assists of
technology offices, working with, you know,
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kind of the the assist of technology
at community there's there's a lot of
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room to not tack on accessibility and
build it in and just make it part
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of the core of how you how
you solve problems, and that's one thing.
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It's been super fun working at all
Ark and been more exciting for us
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and working more high right institutions recently. That's great. Are there any other
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similar solutions that you've provided for other
schools? So from accessibility standpoint, I
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think generally speaking we build like a, you know, the the customer facing
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chat experience, the experience that you
see on every website. That's something that's
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been heavily worked with with accessibility offices
from Berkeley, Harvard and, you know,
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variety of others. You know some
of our corporate customers care a lot
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about that that as well. And
so just get back from the assists of
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Technology Conference in Anaheim called CSIGN A, California State Northridge and it was pretty
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exciting to see, you know,
talks up there about accessible conversational Ui and
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like little little and little oh Ark
Logos up there on and to its talk
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about how to build this and you
know, it's I think it's it's an
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area that's been quite fun for us. It's really something that I think gets
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gets everyone. The team look pretty
pretty excited working. We're getting that space.
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I've seen, like you. It's
funny because it's a little bit sad
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ad because if you kind of walk
around like a see Sun, this is
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big as kind of like the biggest
assists of Technology Conference. You sort of
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when we exhibition booth there. And
if people that kind of walk around,
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there's all these people that do accessibility
auditing, like that's there's a lot of
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auditors there and it you know,
and people stop by your booth they're like
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yeah, you like your guys,
your guys stuff is pretty good. Like
409
00:27:22.720 --> 00:27:25.680
we get flag of all time.
But the funny thing is everyone says they're
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accessible. So it's like the sad
state of affairs. Were like, because
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00:27:30.160 --> 00:27:33.279
you're selling in the high ad or
selling a government like everyone's like, Oh
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00:27:33.400 --> 00:27:36.200
yeah, like we're accessible. We
have all the sort of Cations, but
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00:27:36.240 --> 00:27:40.880
I think that in general, once
you you dive deeper into that, like
414
00:27:41.039 --> 00:27:45.160
a lot of people are approaching accessibilities
a sort of a check the box functionality
415
00:27:45.279 --> 00:27:51.519
and not like let's actually build something
that's incredibly usable for a lot of people,
416
00:27:51.599 --> 00:27:55.119
and I don't know, I say
it's I think there's a big opportunity
417
00:27:55.200 --> 00:28:00.279
out there for technologists and universities to
embrace that a little bit more and make
418
00:28:00.319 --> 00:28:03.279
it easier for people to get in
there, not just make it like kind
419
00:28:03.319 --> 00:28:07.880
of like Oh, we don't want
to get sued kind of standpoint, but
420
00:28:07.920 --> 00:28:11.599
more of a like let's let's figure
out how to actually make this thing easier
421
00:28:11.640 --> 00:28:15.720
for everyone, because I think that, you know, like a curb cut
422
00:28:15.880 --> 00:28:18.119
right like on a sidewalk. Yeah, it's great for someone in a wheelchair,
423
00:28:18.160 --> 00:28:22.160
but you know, if you're pushing
a stroll or you're biking around your
424
00:28:22.240 --> 00:28:25.960
kids, like, you know,
these types of enhancements benefit everyone and they're
425
00:28:26.000 --> 00:28:30.759
not just like something. You know
there's a risk assessment problem. Good,
426
00:28:32.240 --> 00:28:36.039
we talk a lot about it on
the show. Schools are really struggling today
427
00:28:36.119 --> 00:28:40.240
to make the same ads been work. Cepms are up eighty nine percent you
428
00:28:40.359 --> 00:28:45.160
over year on facebook and instagram.
Our College clients are no longer looking for
429
00:28:45.200 --> 00:28:48.720
rented audiences. They're looking for an
owned community where they can engage students even
430
00:28:48.759 --> 00:28:53.319
before they apply. This is why
Zemi has become so crucial for our clients.
431
00:28:53.359 --> 00:28:59.400
With over one million students, close
to tenzero five star ratings, consistently
432
00:28:59.519 --> 00:29:03.799
ranked as one of the top social
lapps and recently one of apples hot APPs
433
00:29:03.799 --> 00:29:06.960
of the week, there is simply
isn't anything out there like it, and
434
00:29:07.039 --> 00:29:10.839
we have seen it all. Zeemi
not only provides the best space for student
435
00:29:10.880 --> 00:29:14.839
engagement, but the most unique in
action will data for their one hundred and
436
00:29:14.880 --> 00:29:19.160
sixty college and university partners. We
know firsthand from our clients that Zeemi is
437
00:29:19.200 --> 00:29:23.920
a must have strategy for Gen Z. Check them out now at colleges dot
438
00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:33.240
Zee mecom. That's colleges dot Zee
m eecom, and yes, tell them
439
00:29:33.240 --> 00:29:38.119
Barton Troy sent you. We close
each episode by asking our guests, related
440
00:29:38.200 --> 00:29:44.559
to their industry and the solutions that
they provide, would there be a quick
441
00:29:44.599 --> 00:29:48.400
tip or a piece of advice that
they could give our marketing audience that they
442
00:29:48.400 --> 00:29:56.640
can implement soon after listening or immediately. Do you have any secrets that you've
443
00:29:56.680 --> 00:30:00.559
been holding back that you can share? That's a that's a your questions.
444
00:30:00.559 --> 00:30:04.160
So I would say, you know, with Ol arc live chat or any
445
00:30:04.240 --> 00:30:08.240
any solution like that, it does
not take that long to deploy and start
446
00:30:08.319 --> 00:30:11.720
learning. Like it's a simple as
adding like a little piece of code to
447
00:30:11.720 --> 00:30:18.160
your website. Like we put together
a checklist for enrollment folks. You can
448
00:30:18.200 --> 00:30:23.559
get at alarcom s e D checklists
or Etu checklist and that will kind of
449
00:30:23.599 --> 00:30:26.440
go through some of the things I
talked about, like helping the fine goals
450
00:30:26.480 --> 00:30:30.599
and figure out staffing and, you
know, some sort of walking those those
451
00:30:30.599 --> 00:30:36.319
problems through. And and I think
that it's often often adding some of the
452
00:30:36.359 --> 00:30:40.519
website feels a little bit daunting.
Often sort of experimenting within your Customer Journey
453
00:30:40.559 --> 00:30:42.839
feels a little bit daunting, and
especially inside these big institutions, was so
454
00:30:42.960 --> 00:30:48.880
many different, you know, people
that control different little pieces of that funnel.
455
00:30:49.039 --> 00:30:56.559
I think that one way of thinking
about just doing business on the Internet
456
00:30:56.599 --> 00:31:00.920
and connecting with Gen Z is it
like you gotta be there, you got
457
00:31:00.920 --> 00:31:06.400
to be like where where people are
right during that process. So if you're
458
00:31:06.440 --> 00:31:11.839
you know, sitting in your office, you're on campus office right waiting for
459
00:31:11.880 --> 00:31:15.160
the phone to ring, or you
know, you know obviously amission councilor got
460
00:31:15.160 --> 00:31:18.680
doing all these events all the time. But when people are in that application
461
00:31:18.759 --> 00:31:23.119
process and that consideration phase, they're
on their phones, they're looking at websites,
462
00:31:23.279 --> 00:31:27.960
they are at their home filling out
applications, and I think you know,
463
00:31:29.240 --> 00:31:32.119
if you want to learn, learn
what that experience is like from their
464
00:31:32.200 --> 00:31:34.000
perspective, like the easiest thing to
do is make it very easy to get
465
00:31:34.000 --> 00:31:40.079
in touch and and and start like
experimenting, and I think that I would
466
00:31:40.079 --> 00:31:42.440
recommend that anyone listens this, you
know, whether you're using US or some
467
00:31:42.519 --> 00:31:48.680
other provider. Like the ability to
communicate with someone as they are moving through
468
00:31:48.680 --> 00:31:53.119
a process that you've designed and they're
trying to optimize its incredibly valuable, especially
469
00:31:53.119 --> 00:31:56.880
when they're in the moment of doing
that process, not like Hey, let
470
00:31:56.880 --> 00:32:00.640
me send you a text message to
cry to move you through the process,
471
00:32:00.680 --> 00:32:05.200
but like they're literally on your site, evaluating your university and trying to figure
472
00:32:05.200 --> 00:32:07.759
out this is a place that they
want to go to. Like if you
473
00:32:07.759 --> 00:32:10.559
can be there and build that relationship
and create that sense of belonging and show
474
00:32:10.640 --> 00:32:14.720
them why you're a little bit different
than some of the other institutions that also
475
00:32:14.759 --> 00:32:19.319
have web pages and build like a
little bit of a connection can be incredibly
476
00:32:19.400 --> 00:32:23.960
valuable to that one individual, but
also incredibly valuable to your insight into what's
477
00:32:24.000 --> 00:32:29.799
happening in that process. So that
that would be my main take is it's
478
00:32:29.839 --> 00:32:32.839
it's not that hard to run a
little test and start learning. Thank you.
479
00:32:32.960 --> 00:32:37.200
Been Love that response. For our
listeners who would like to reach out
480
00:32:37.240 --> 00:32:42.079
and contact you may have questions.
What would be the best way for them
481
00:32:42.119 --> 00:32:45.440
to contact you? Yeah, well, I'm super easy to get in touch
482
00:32:45.480 --> 00:32:50.640
with. If you can email me, just bannettle arkcom probably. If you
483
00:32:50.680 --> 00:32:52.160
want to ensure like I get,
I get a lot of email. If
484
00:32:52.160 --> 00:32:54.839
you want to ensure that, like
I'm, I'm on it and I get
485
00:32:54.839 --> 00:32:58.480
back to you. If you just
want to old OCOM and chatted with someone
486
00:32:58.559 --> 00:33:00.480
on our team, like it just
hey, like you know, I heard
487
00:33:00.559 --> 00:33:06.960
this podcast. I want to,
you know, challenge them more like those
488
00:33:07.000 --> 00:33:09.359
guys. Have a really good controller
of my calendar and I listen everything our
489
00:33:09.359 --> 00:33:14.720
customer service in our customer facing teams. Flag. You can also ping me
490
00:33:14.759 --> 00:33:17.920
on Linkedin. I'm very responsive on
Linkedin. Email is probably the place where
491
00:33:17.920 --> 00:33:22.640
I get may not be the best
way, but I've I'll yo'll do my
492
00:33:22.640 --> 00:33:27.839
best. I'll do my best to
find it enough. Very good. Thank
493
00:33:27.920 --> 00:33:32.279
you been I've loved this conversation and
I think lied chat is very valuable for
494
00:33:32.319 --> 00:33:38.519
the higher rate community at this time. Bart, any last party words and
495
00:33:38.759 --> 00:33:42.720
or thoughts from you? Yeah,
I just wanted to kind of I always
496
00:33:42.720 --> 00:33:45.319
like to take and tease out a
little bit of some things that I heard
497
00:33:45.319 --> 00:33:47.640
that I just think are really kind
of it's like taking a highlighter to it
498
00:33:47.839 --> 00:33:52.720
or just underlining something that we've talked
about. And so couple things, especially
499
00:33:52.720 --> 00:33:57.079
just this last comment that been made
about the idea of being willing to try
500
00:33:57.119 --> 00:34:00.440
some things out, trying to learn
something. I'm reminded of a quote by
501
00:34:00.440 --> 00:34:04.440
Alvin Toffler that says the litter of
the twenty one century will not be those
502
00:34:04.440 --> 00:34:07.800
who cannot read, but they'll be
those who cannot learn, UN learn and
503
00:34:07.840 --> 00:34:12.239
relearn again, and I think that's
so true. When we talked about technology,
504
00:34:12.239 --> 00:34:14.920
when we talk about all kinds of
things, is that it's very dynamic,
505
00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:16.880
is very fluid. A lot of
things are changing and I think that
506
00:34:17.280 --> 00:34:21.440
being successful means that you've got to
be willing to kind of get out there
507
00:34:21.440 --> 00:34:25.199
and and and and take advantage of
things when they're going on. Too many
508
00:34:25.199 --> 00:34:29.440
times, especially in higher education,
we do things because we've always done it
509
00:34:29.480 --> 00:34:32.119
that way and we can't do that
with generation Z. We can't do that
510
00:34:32.199 --> 00:34:36.280
with millennials in the way that we
mark it to them. And so I
511
00:34:36.320 --> 00:34:37.760
think that, you know, part
of what Ben talked about is so critical
512
00:34:37.760 --> 00:34:40.119
in there, and I also really
liked what he said about, you know,
513
00:34:40.159 --> 00:34:43.719
be where they are. You know, we've talked to so many other
514
00:34:43.719 --> 00:34:47.800
people on this podcast, whether it's
Adam metclaff at at Zee me, you
515
00:34:47.840 --> 00:34:52.400
know, with the idea of being
able to have conversations with students, having
516
00:34:52.440 --> 00:34:57.519
peer to peer conversations on their APP, you're you're basically putting your school where
517
00:34:57.519 --> 00:35:00.280
they are there in social media APP
in that in that particular thing. You
518
00:35:00.320 --> 00:35:05.679
know, we've also talked with with
Ethan Beaut at at bombomb you know,
519
00:35:05.760 --> 00:35:08.119
the idea of having video email,
and you think about the different ways that
520
00:35:08.159 --> 00:35:12.519
we it all comes down to relationship. Is what I'm trying to point out,
521
00:35:12.559 --> 00:35:15.400
is whether you're using you know,
Buddy Zee me, Oh lark bom
522
00:35:15.440 --> 00:35:20.199
bomb. It comes down to relationship
and being able to do relationship where people
523
00:35:20.239 --> 00:35:22.719
are and I think that we all
know that facetoface is probably the most effective
524
00:35:22.719 --> 00:35:27.559
relationship. And then it gets to
you know, video conferencing is kind of
525
00:35:27.599 --> 00:35:30.880
a second place area. But then
you start getting down into chat, there's
526
00:35:30.880 --> 00:35:35.800
going to be much more personable than
a live chats can be more personal than
527
00:35:35.840 --> 00:35:38.920
the email and video emails more personal
than email. Email is kind of the
528
00:35:38.920 --> 00:35:42.639
default now, but I think there's
a lot of other ways that we can
529
00:35:42.679 --> 00:35:45.960
really get more relationship and a lot
more trust building with some of these other
530
00:35:46.000 --> 00:35:50.360
tools and these other technologies, and
so don't don't take them for granted to
531
00:35:50.400 --> 00:35:52.159
just say, Oh, we don't
need that. It's another tool in your
532
00:35:52.239 --> 00:35:55.119
arsenal that I think you really need
to look at and I really appreciate been
533
00:35:55.159 --> 00:35:59.079
being on the show today to talk
a little bit about that. Thank you
534
00:35:59.079 --> 00:36:04.599
both for those wonderful parting shots.
The High Ed Marketer podcast is sponsored by
535
00:36:04.639 --> 00:36:09.440
Kaylor solutions and education, marketing and
branding agency and by thing patented, a
536
00:36:09.519 --> 00:36:16.599
marketing execution company combining printing and mailing
for higher ed outreach solutions. On behalf
537
00:36:16.639 --> 00:36:21.159
of my co host, Bart Kaylor. I'm Troye singer. Thank you for
538
00:36:21.280 --> 00:36:28.079
joining us. You've been listening to
the Higher Ed Marketer. To ensure that
539
00:36:28.119 --> 00:36:31.920
you never miss an episode, subscribe
to the show in your favorite podcast player.
540
00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:36.280
If you're listening with apple PODCASTS,
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541
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tap the number of stars you think the
542
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podcast deserves. Until next time,