University of Hertfordshire | Increased offers during clearing
One of the busiest interaction challenges for any university is clearing, where universities get to fill up any vacant spots on their courses.
The ability to answer more calls and smarter processing increased offers made and improved student experience
Competition between universities to fill places is fierce — and clearing is a vital function of ensuring each place on each course is filled. Sheffield Hallam always strives for excellence and they acknowledged that their clearing solution was not delivering the required results.
Their call waiting times were often too long, leading to high rates of call abandonment. The infrastructure capacity was restricted to only 30 agents on the front line, which limited the volume of calls that could be handled. It was almost impossible to keep up with demand during clearing.
They deployed Liberty Converse, our omnichannel contact centre solution, which enabled increased inbound lines and improved infrastructure capacity for the clearing period. The solution was a fully scalable option and was highly cost effective.
“When we started working with Netcall to maximise our clearing operation, we had very firm ideas about what we wanted and how we wanted to achieve it. Throughout, Netcall has been very supportive and worked alongside us every step of the way. They successfully helped us to develop and implement a new system that other companies in the industry had said couldn’t be done!”
Lindsey White
Student Recruitment Manager (Operations), Sheffield Hallam University
With Liberty Converse, call wait time was dramatically reduced. The average dropped to under 10 seconds – reducing by more than 99%. Students could get through to front-line staff quickly to answer their questions. And, because the levels of frustration and disappointment were lowered, the calls were easier for agents to handle.
The call abandonment rate nose-dived. Call hang-ups reduced by a huge 92%. If a student did abandon their call for any reason, they were called back using CLI reports. So, no callers were missed.
When delays built up or average handling times were creeping up, the management team were able to moderate the queues and make changes to utilise additional resource.
This is because real-time data was now able to be displayed on user-friendly dashboards. This was a game-changer.
Previously, phone lines were used to both queue and answer calls which limited call answering availability. With Liberty Converse, the resilience and scalability of the hosted calls meant that all available phone lines could be used to answer calls.
It amounted to a 37% increase in the number of calls answered. Effectively this amounted to 3 more agents on the front line.
Caller experience was transformed. Clearing was much more manageable for staff to handle all calls and to manage the peaks.
The end result was that the University was able to fill a massive 15% more places on courses for the following academic year. This was due to the faster, more effective management of calls during the clearing period. Sheffield Hallam have continued to benefit from these results year after year.
37%
more calls answered
<10 Seconds
waiting time
15%
more offers made in clearing
With our contact centre solution you’ve got the tools and AI to deliver standout self-service, omnichannel interactions and customer experience analytics
One of the busiest interaction challenges for any university is clearing, where universities get to fill up any vacant spots on their courses.
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