3 Parts of a University That Should Have a Contact Center

With the modernization of today’s contact center,deciding where and how to incorporate them is key to building good relationships with people.

A cutting-edge contact center has new digital channels including live chat and social media, expanding on traditional telephone operations. Educational institutions such as universities and colleges require contact centers to recruit and enroll students, promote newsworthy events, and build a healthy network of alumni and donors. So, how can you use them strategically?

Lesson one: The function of a university contact center is to provide an excellent experience to whomever is contacting the university.

Lesson two: A strong university contact center collects metrics to learn and remember who’s reaching out and why. This information helps representatives take proper action for successful resolution.

Here are three areas in your university where you should consider implementing a contact center.

When talking about introducing a contact center at your university, your admissions/enrollment office should be a primary focus, as they are the front door for incoming students. Whether it’s sorting through applicants’ SAT and ACT scores or prioritizing their questions regarding college applications, every call — every point of contact — is important. With an admissions office contact center, all calls are assigned to available agents who manage them to resolution.

Consider today’s college demographic and the various social channels that students and parents are familiar with. They will reach out to you in whichever way is most convenient to them, so make sure that no silos get in the way of effectively tracking phone calls, emails or direct messages.

If an admissions office is a university’s front door, then an alumni association is its roof; it shelters your school’s legacy through fundraising and connects new additions to its foundation.

A contact center in your university’s alumni association is a savvy decision. By leveraging software that collects and pulls alumni information, staff members working on outbound campaigns can make their calls more personal. We know it isn’t always simple to ask alumni to make donations, and a contact center allows agents to build rapport with them more easily.

Modern contact center platforms can tie to existing databases and platforms already used by your alumni association. With an upgrade, you empower your staff to better commit to their contacts long term — thereby safeguarding the financial health of your institution.

For most people, the college experience is incomplete without attending a big game (or 10). Getting tickets to said games can be an ordeal, especially at large universities. This is where contact centers come into play.

A contact center allows patrons to visit a website and handle all purchases and inquiries digitally. Automating this process with self-service and virtual agents reduces the time it takes to buy tickets, making for a happier customer experience and lessening the load on athletics department staff.

At CDW, we take pride in working with you to get your institution on the path to success.

Recently, we assisted a university’s admissions team that was legally mandated to state a disclaimer during every phone call with students. Not all the staff read the disclaimers, and they looked to us to figure out a solution. We introduced artificial intelligence technology into their contact center to record and analyze calls, flagging those with missing disclaimers for coaching opportunities.

Whatever challenge you have, our solutions architects are ready to assist.