Live chat makes student engagement easy.

What do these universities have in common? They all use live chat to boost their enrollment and improve student retention in remote learning environments.

  1. logo for Northeastern University
  2. logo for the University of Virginia
  3. logo for UC Berkeley
  4. logo for Harvard Business School
  5. logo for Ithaca College
  6. logo for the University of Michigan
  7. logo for Tulane University
  8. logo for the University of Montana
  9. logo for the University of Maryland Nursing School
  10. logo for Rutgers University
  11. logo for Syracuse University
  12. logo for Emory University

Why higher education chooses Olark

Accessible and secure

  1. GDPR compliant
  2. ADA Section 508 compliant
  3. WCAG 2.1 AA rated

Robust

Powerful features and a flexible API for custom needs

Budget-friendly

Competitive pricing on a pay-per-seat model

Approved by Gen Z

Today’s students prefer chat over phone calls and email

Features that serve every department

Groups

Transfer chats to the team who can handle them best. Perfect for routing admissions inquiries to the appropriate program.

Reporting

Detailed analytics on chat activity to help you understand and optimize your performance. Plays well analytics tools like CRMs and Google Analytics.

Automation

Flexible chatbots to handle tedious tasks and intelligent targeting that auto-engages your website visitors at the right time to encourage action.

Pro support

Get help with a custom implementation of AI conversation tools, API guidance, higher ed chat expertise, and on-call support.

 

Convert admitted applicants into enrolled students

Q: How can you increase enrollment yield? A: Real-time, one-on-one support via live chat.

Make it personal

Whether they care most about scholarship deadlines or housing options, live chat helps you address their biggest concerns in real time.

Start the conversation

Engage your visitors based on which pages they’ve viewed, the marketing campaign that brought them in, or their geographic location.

an Olark chat box showing a chat with an agent and student discussing an admissions deadline.
pink quotation marks over olark live chat testimonial

"Olark provides a major linchpin between all of the activities designed to get [students] onto our website and [talking to] us."

Harold Baldry, Owner, HBA Learning Centres
Read HBA's case study

Chat supports your shift from enrollment to success

The questions don’t stop after orientation. Help students navigate their academic journeys and scale your advising efforts.

One-on-one advising

FAQs can help with “What’s the deadline to change my major?” but you’ll need a human to handle “Should I major in English or Comparative Literature?”

Office hours without the office

Spare your students the stress of trekking across campus. Advise them remotely with live chat or schedule video calls using Olark.

Help more. Staff less.

Use Olark’s built-in reporting to inform your site content and automate FAQs with chatbots. Reduced chat volume + more efficient agents = WIN-WIN.

See it in practice

University of Montana uses Olark to improve site content and decrease repetitive inquiries by 50%

Read UM's case study
the University of Montana logo
an image of the user interface for Olark's reporting features, showing chat metrics.

Use chat to improve student outcomes and boost retention

Increase student engagement and use of student resources by making them remote-friendly, convenient, and easier to use.

Friendlier Financial Aid

Help students resolve issues with tuition, loans, and scholarships while protecting their data secure chatbox and transcripts.

Real-time Registrars

Transfer documents securely and make it easy for students to handle course enrollment issues in live conversation... before they become a crisis.

Convenient Career Centers

Offer one-on-one virtual coaching to boost job placement stats and help students find success in the real world.

Instant IT Helpdesk

Speed up issue resolution with co-browsing or Zoom and capture conversations in your helpdesk ticketing system. Check out our many integrations!

Healthcare within reach

Help students access health services that are otherwise hard to use. Use chat shortcuts and FAQs to standardize messaging related to public health.

How it works at UVA

University of Virginia’s Career Center added chat and boosted student engagement with their services. Find out why over half of their interactions take place with Olark.

Read UVA's case study
the University of Virginia logo
an image depicting the file upload feature within chat.

Talk to Olark

Get in touch with a real human to learn about using Olark to support your organization.

Accessibility

Olark built your chatbox to be compliant with Section 508 of the ADA and exceed WCAG 2.0 AA standards, so you can deliver live support to everyone who visits your site.

an illustrated wheelchair icon with a border

ADA Section 508 compliant

Reviewed by Allyant for Accessibility

Reviewed by Allyant for Accessibility

WCAG 2.0 Certification Badge image

Independently rated as WCAG 2.1 AA

Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Want to learn more about Olark’s commitment to digital accessibility? Read the pledge we took on Global Accessibility Awareness Day.

Olark plays well with others

With a huge library of integrations and a flexible API, Olark can tie into your systems and make magic happen. Most higher ed customers use our toolkit to do things like authenticating students, optimizing marketing campaigns, and collaborating with teammates on cases.

Olark integrates with WordPress, Salesforce, ZenDesk, HubSpot, Slack, Google Analytics, HelpScout, MailChimp, JIRA, and many more. Olark integrates with WordPress, Salesforce, ZenDesk, HubSpot, Slack, Google Analytics, HelpScout, MailChimp, JIRA, and many more.

Get creative with our API

Got another use case in mind? Need to link up with a quirky internal platform? We’ve got you covered. Use our flexible Javascript API to build what you need or talk to us about custom automations.

Get a leg up with Olark Pro

We designed Olark Pro with universities in mind. Pro customers get extra support with a dedicated account manager, on-call help during busy events, and handholding through deployment.

Plus, we know procurement can be a bear, so we offer flexible terms. 😉

Schedule an Olark Pro call
illustration of a smiling man wearing headphones and an Olark tee shirt