CONTACT CENTRE DESIGN AND DEPLOYMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL ADMISSIONS

The department was managing its international recruitment, sponsorship and enrolment campaigns with inefficient and basic systems that lacked integration, automation and reporting capability. The department had no ability to generate and analyse data on its clients and workforce that could be used to manage resources and recruitment campaigns more efficiently.

A contact centre design (infrastructure and business processes) was identified to address all of these issues and integrate the phone, email, text, CRM and overseas agent systems with new business processes, which required significant culture change, promotion, training and adoption, as well as technology integration and configuration.

The contact centre was designed to:

1. assist the department staff use efficient ways to make calls to handle the international campaigns and to move away from manual ways of working.

2. categorise and log all client interaction details and integrate with the CRM to enable more focused client engagement.

3. record all call details to enable performance analysis and more efficient workforce management.

DELIVERED SOLUTION

IMA Management & technology (IMA) managed the delivery of the project, providing analysis, project management, change management and test management services, to define and design new communications infrastructure, roll out a culture change in the department, assess and uplift capabilities and prepare personnel to use the new solution as well as delivering the technology underpinning the new solution.

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• Used PRINCE2 methodology to manage the infrastructure work.

• Assessed current capabilities, processes, technology and requirements in the department.

• Produced a project brief, requirements document and business case and gained project approval and funding.

• Formed a project team and project control board.

• Managed the procurement process to employ a design vendor.

• Managed stakeholder communications, requirements, reporting and relationships across the IT, VU International and Student Services departments and the Project Management Office.

• Managed all schedule, scope, risk, issue, decision, dependency, quality and financial elements of the project and completed all associated project artefacts, using standard PMO templates, governance and framework.

• Provided regular reports to the PMO, project control board and senior executive group.

• Employed the ADKAR (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement) model to manage the change of transitioning impacted personnel to the new system.

• Ran an awareness campaign to affected staff.

• Showcased comparable successful systems and processes.

• Communicated to all affected staff by regular emails, hand-outs and briefing sessions and ran training sessions.

• Ran business process coaching sessions.

• Held weekly business readiness assessments to determine the confidence and capabilities of staff in the new processes and technology.

• Ran mock campaigns to identify knowledge gaps and address them through guides and coaching.

• Provided “Go-live” support.

• Held “post-Go-live” reviews and feedback sessions to address issues, reinforce new business processes and aid continuous improvement.

BENEFITS DELIVERED

• Reduced the number of handled inbound calls by 85%, by increasing call routing accuracy, improving issue resolution efficiency, due to new business processes and introducing automated resolution of some issues.

• Recruitment, Admissions and Sponsorship specialists were freed up to spend significantly more time on core activities, due to improved business processes.

• Call data has enabled detailed performance analysis to improve coaching.

• Detailed call data has allowed department managers and directors to hire and deploy resources more efficiently and determine how outbound campaigns should be focused.

• Calls made to the International department incorrectly have been almost completely eradicated.