Entrepreneurs are people who change the world, pushing forward ideas that benefit humanity. ParentSquare, along with other new-age school-home connection companies, is doing just that, re-imagining school relationships and bringing about an era of openness and trust.
We have our schools to thank, the true drivers of this innovation, leading education into this incredibly advantageous digital age, elevating happiness through social collaboration both for teachers and for families.
As we plan for 2019 and beyond, let’s reflect on the milestones we reached in 2018.
ParentSquare Is Growing
Many, many, many thanks. Over 1M users, in more than 1,500 districts and schools, from 35 states are now part of the ParentSquare family.
Our company is growing as well to ensure we are equipped to match the exciting growth of our platform, and as such, we are moving to a new office in our neighboring city of Goleta. You’ll be able to get to know all of us with our new ‘Meet The Team’ series on our blog beginning this January.
Product Improvements
This year we endeavored to achieve bold objectives – building new products and redesigning existing ones – to enable you to deliver streamlined, enjoyable experiences for your staff, students and parents at scale. Here’s a glance at a few big features we released this year:
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StudentSquare extends the same ease of communication to the students.
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Online Forms & Permission Slips bring convenience to parents.
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Parent Dashboard provides an easy-to-navigate view to parents.
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ParentSquare Widget & Social Share allow you to share with a click.
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Our Native Android App makes use of all that Android has to offer.
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Single Sign On grants users the ability to login just once to all systems.
Happy Customers
Being customer-centric is who we are on a DNA level – customer focus is a priority not just for our Customer Success Team but across all our teams. This year we instituted some key changes making customer success interaction more human and caring.
- Keyword of the month: From Proactive to First-Touch Resolution
- Extended support hours: 6am to 9pm PST and weekend support
- More channels: Text support along with extended Chat hours
- New self-help pages: for mobile apps and in Spanish
- Training certification modules: 30 minute modules to learn PS.
Fresh Content
Need some inspiration? We’ve been posting articles with best practices, tips and actionable steps schools can take to cultivate a stronger and safer school community. Here’s some of the content you loved most:
- Teacher Appreciation Week Is Here: Write A Thank-You Note!
- How to Write the Perfect Survey Email
- School Safety: 5 Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Community
- 17 Strategies You May Not Have Thought of for Building a Vibrant School Community
What’s Next
As we progress into 2019, we look forward to implementing new features, strengthening current ones, and providing stellar content to help navigate you through incorporating parent engagement efforts at your schools.
Here’s a couple things to look forward to in 2019:
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Grow Great Kids Series Launch with Mr. B with Part 1 focused on SEL
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Month-by-month progress reports in Data Dashboard to help you visualize
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In-built video support for sharing and viewing videos easily
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Gamification elements in StudentSquare to increase and retain adoption
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Shared accounts with teacher/ admin/ parent/ family under one account
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Numerous other much asked for improvements – Mobile Platforms with all features, Newsletter Templates, Flexible Recipient List Build, Translation Workflows, Notification Preferences, and more
As you approach the new year with hope, excitement and optimism, take some time to set some goals. Here are my new year resolutions and inspirations:
Work Resolution: For my holiday travel read I picked up “The Happiness Advantage” by Shawn Achor, and for sure, happiness tops the list of work resolutions 🙂
Personal Resolution: At my high school’s 25th-year reunion this month, socially-active friends were the easiest to connect with, so posts at least once per month!
Family Resolution: This had to do something with tech usage 🙂 I got our family to agree to five minutes of Ted-Talk for each hour of Tech!
Have a hearty laugh and welcome 2019. May it be your happiest!
