There are especially busy times during the school year that college students and staff can benefit from a University call center partner.
As summer simmers to a close, colleges and universities around the country are beginning to open their doors, departments and phone lines to the influx of both fresh and familiar students. Campus administrative and support departments quickly begin to buzz with activity that often exceeds their ability to efficiently handle. Long lines and long hold times are common, and have become a dreaded part of the back to school experience.
Although this is the case for most campuses, some higher education facilities have decided to raise their standards of service for their students and staff. One such campus is the Old Dominion University (ODU) in Norfolk, VA. This University decided they were done providing limited availability to students seeking help from their Career Management Center (CMC) and instead opened up the CMC’s phone support hours to run 24/7/365.
By making this groundbreaking decision, ODU became the first University in the country to offer unlimited support access for students calling in with questions or who are seeking to set appointments with career advisors. Providing this unprecedented level of support quickly earned ODU recognition from the National Association of Colleges and Employers as the most innovative career center in the country.
How did ODU manage to so effectively step up their game and provide round-the-clock career center service to their students? By partnering with a leading US-based call center that provides answering services for universities – and they’re not the only ones.
Cambridge College has also been able to improve the quality of service to their students and staff by partnering with a 24 hour University call center. By having their department head strategize with one of the call center’s tech agents, Cambridge was able to create dynamic scripts the virtual receptionists could follow. Through this effort, the bottleneck of inquiries the college could handle was able to open up into a steady flow of support that was previously not possible.
From the moment the college turned the phones over to their new call center partner, Cambridge claims they were able to greatly increase the range of services and support they can offer their students and staff. In fact, Dr. Joseph D. stated that this partnership with the University call center, “…strengthened the mission of Cambridge College to provide academically excellent, time efficient, and cost-effective higher education for a diverse population of working adults for whom those opportunities may have been limited or denied.“
Many other Universities around the country are catching wind of this affordable and effective method of boosting their capabilities and capacity beyond the limitations they had grudgingly learned to accept. Instead, colleges have been able to rethink how they manage their departments’ technical support, increase the number of qualified applicants they bring in, and even boost their fundraising efforts. This is all because they partnered with the right University call center.
Universities who have already cemented these outsourcing partnerships have been able to turn the tables on the constant chaos of department phone lines being tied up by the busy back to school crowd and beyond. The only remaining question is: What might your University be capable of if it weren’t limited by how many students it could support?
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