Answerhall, for charter and private schools
Your front desk, answered from what you have already published.
When does the lottery open. Is there after-school care. What time is early release on Friday. Parents and staff ask in plain language and the answer comes from your website and calendars, with a link to the page it came from. Ask in Spanish, it answers in Spanish.
Pick a question or type your own.
What your office answers by hand.
We ran the 80 questions parents ask most against ten Utah charter school websites. On average the site could answer 34. The rest are the calls your front desk takes between everything else it does.
- Medication, illness and when a child can come back.
- Skyward, Canvas and Clever logins, and who resets them.
- Who is allowed to pick up a child, and what to do about a late pickup.
- Lottery dates, the waiting list, and whether siblings get priority.
- Early release, snow days, and what time the doors open on a Friday.
Most of the missing answers are a paragraph of writing away. Answerhall shows you exactly which ones, every month.
34 of 80
questions a typical school website can answer today, across the ten we tested.
55 of 80
answered by Answerhall on the best-prepared of those sites, on day one, with a source under every answer.
0
invented phone numbers, dates or policies. When the site does not say, it says so.
Three things it will not do, and why that is the point.
It will not use anything you have not published. It reads your website and your public calendars. It never touches your student information system, grades or records. That is deliberate, and it is why it can be live in two weeks instead of two quarters.
It will not answer without showing where the answer came from. Every reply links to the page. A parent sees the sentence and the source, and your office can check any answer in one click.
It will not guess. When your site does not say, it says so: "I don't have that in the school's published information, please check with the office." A confident wrong answer about a closure date or a phone number is the one thing this will never do. Anything built in a weekend will.
Try it on a real school
These run on each school's own published pages and calendars, in their own colours. Ask anything a parent would ask.
Demos are loading.
How it goes live
- 1
Your site and calendars are read
Pages, handbooks and both campus calendars if you have them. About ten minutes.
- 2
Your office tests it first
Staff get a private page and stress-test the answers before any parent sees it. Most schools fix a few website gaps in this week; Answerhall shows exactly where they are.
- 3
Then it goes on your website
One line of code, or I add it for you. Spanish and other languages work from day one.
- 4
Every month, the questions it could not answer
The list of what parents asked that your site does not say. Most are a paragraph of writing to fix, and none of them need software.
The price
$4,999
per school, per year. One invoice.
- Setup on your website and calendars
- A private page for your office, first
- The website widget, when your staff say so
- Re-read on a schedule as your site changes
- Every month, the list of what it could not answer
- Under Utah's $5,000 direct-purchase threshold
See it on your school's site
Give me your website address. In about ten minutes you get a link to Answerhall running on your own pages, and by email, the list of the questions your site cannot answer yet.
Questions principals ask
- Does it see grades, Skyward or Canvas?
- No. It reads only what is public on your website and calendars. It cannot see, and is never connected to, any student system.
- What happens when a parent asks something that is not on the site?
- It says it does not have that in the school's published information and points them to the office. That question then appears in your monthly list.
- Who owns the data?
- You do. Your content is processed only as your tool and at your direction, nothing is retained beyond that, and nothing is ever used to train anything. Usage logs hold no names, cookies or addresses.
- How is it priced?
- $4,999 a year, one invoice, everything included: setup, hosting, updates when your site changes, the staff page, the website widget and the monthly report. That sits under Utah's $5,000 direct-purchase threshold, so most charter schools can buy it without a bid process.
- Can it answer by phone?
- A voice line is coming in January for schools already using Answerhall. Ask and I will keep you posted.
Rather talk first? Twenty minutes with Pierre, or pierre@bessondigital.com.