SUNY Broome Community College

Challenge

Improve IT help desk service levels

Results

• Reduced wait times for students
• Round-the-clock after-hours help desk services dramatically improve student service and satisfaction
• Staff are able to focus on face-to-face student interactions

Summary

I'm Larry Allen. I'm from SUNY Broome Community College in upstate New York. Right now, there's a lot of talk on retention. And we're trying to do a lot more to have sustained enrollment with a lot less resources. The Ellucian Help Desk has helped our student success at SUNY Broome by providing 24/7 after-hours help desk coverage. 

From a budgetary concern, it was a no-brainer, actually. We were in a situation where we had lines out the doors for student processing for financial aid, for student accounts. We thought that might be a pain point for our students, so we decided that we needed some sort of support system other than just our front-end student account specialists. 

It's been extremely successful, as they've been taking over the overflow of those peak enrollment periods. They actually have a whole team of agents that can call. We wouldn't be able to do that from a budgetary concern. 

We've had shorter lines. No student complaints at all to administration in the last two major terms. Staff is able to focus just solely on the person that's in front of them and not have to worry about the phone ringing off the hook. 

Another way that we're measuring the success is also, our new first-time students in a declining enrollment environment has increased. If at all possible, find out what your total call volume would be during those peak enrollment-type periods. And once we find out that wow, that volume is a lot larger than what we actually knew, they were able to staff for the next time we ran it. And we had a wonderful closure rate, and the phones were answered within a minute. 

Our Ellucian partnership has been great. The communication between our school and Ellucian has just been phenomenal. We're able to communicate and transfer knowledge back and forth with ease. They're available almost around the clock, really. And having that remote access to look through our system and to give updated information to students when they call, we know they're giving the best answers possible, because it's right in front of them. 

Whenever a student calls, we get the ticket that says, “This is what they saw on the screens, and this is the answer that they gave them.” So, we're always informed. It's just been a great communication system.