Strengthening District Communication During COVID
As the two-year anniversary of the pandemic approaches, many school districts continue to grapple with consistent, timely communication about COVID-19.
Even basic best practices—like asking parents how they want to communicate and ensuring translations are available for multilingual families—can fall by the wayside when messages need to get out asap. And ever-changing protocols and rules have stymied administrators’ efforts to build a comprehensive communications approach that maximizes transparency.
Organizations like the National School Public Relations Association offer their members a wealth of online resources and toolkits to assist with crisis response. However, given administrators’ overwhelming to-do lists, time to research and implement complex plans can be hard to come by.
Meanwhile, parents are frustrated with the ongoing challenges. In particular, they want to see improvements in:
-The quality of information shared.
-Timely updates on protocols and schedules.
-Ease of access to accurate COVID-19 resources.
-The ability to connect with someone from the district to receive information or ask questions and receive responses in a timely manner.
Leveraging the power of mobile messaging and AI
Districts struggling to crack the communication code will be heartened to hear that it is possible to incorporate mobile messaging powered by artificial intelligence quickly, without huge new investments or months of planning.
Since our bots are available to understand families’ needs and provide them support whenever a school related issue arises (and in the last year, families have needed more support around navigating the pandemic than any other topic), several of our clients have been utilizing the AllHere platform to keep their communities in the know about COVID. The benefits they’ve seen from incorporating a custom chatbot include:
-Reaching parents instantly via their preferred platform (SMS text) in their preferred language.
-Two-way communication with instant, 24/7 responses when contacted by learning guardians, parents, and students.
-Our bots are available to understand families’ needs and provide them support whenever a school related issue arises (and in the last year, families have needed more support around navigating the pandemic than any other topic).
-A knowledge base that’s unique to each chatbot—which districts can update anytime with the most up-to-date information on school schedules, virtual learning access, community health resources, COVID protocols, and more.
Some districts have temporarily pivoted their chatbots away from other priorities toward COVID communications during the 2021-22 school year, and they intend to return to those priorities once the pandemic eases. The AllHere support team is set up to accommodate such changes with no disruption or downtime.
To learn more about how the AllHere platform can help your district crack the COVID communications code, connect with a member of our team.
