Modern communications at a modern university: 8x8 at the University of Worcester

The Challenge: Keeping everyone connected using up-to-date systems without high cost

The University of Worcester needed a communications solution that could scale to work effectively with changes in working situations and scenarios as the university’s existing on-premise tools, including Cisco solutions, and third-party integrations did not provide the expected or necessary reliability, while also being expensive.

To improve matters, the university was looking to transition away from legacy desktop handsets and towards a robust, integrated service, accommodating all communications across the contact center, phone calls, and chat functions.

As part of that robustness, there was a need for the service to be able to handle spikes in incoming calls at certain times of the year, particularly around weeks like Clearing in August. A period when university applicants who hadn't received an offer to a specific university contact other institutions to see if they could enroll on a course with unfilled spaces. This can flood the university call system with thousands of calls per day.

With a limited number of available places, the University Clearing period can be challenging for both applicants and staff members. The pressure on recruiting high-quality candidates puts considerable strain on the communication services which need to work perfectly with as few dropped contacts as possible.

The team wanted to move things forward. For them, that means a solution that worked. They were juggling far too many systems, especially telephony clients and messaging clients, to move effectively to delivering a future-looking customer service and experience. There needed to be some standardization across not only the service that they offered, but the devices and tools being used.

8x8 offered a powerful, cloud-based solution with a variety of features to keep things simple and aligned with the level of control and flexibility required by the university.

The Solution: Better communication, better engagement

The university chose to deploy 8x8 Work, Contact Centre, and the MS Teams integration.

What made the solution ever better was that migration was very simple.

Martin Whiteside, CIO, recalls “8x8 was great! Once we set it up, we could do everything ourselves. We could actually see it, test it, play with it, understand it.”

Another win was the use of the built-in chat option for students.

“8x8’s chat feature is great for students who don’t like talking on the phone,” Whiteside says. “Many of them much prefer to go on a chat and start their conversation off as chat and then get to a point where they are speaking to someone.”

In addition, 8x8 Work gave them redundancy and a backup for when or if MS Teams stopped working.

Rolled out for the start of Clearing, on the technical side, the results were impressive. There were no dropped calls and staff found it easy to use after just a small amount of training, preferring it over the previous versions.

The Results: No student left behind, no dropped calls

8x8 worked, and it worked well. Not only did the new system minimize IT headaches, but staff coming on board from various departments were able to quickly pick up how to use 8x8—many staff not even receiving formal training. Staff were able to be more productive, process calls more efficiently, and deliver outcomes quicker than before. Calmer staff meant that, during Clearing, they were able to focus more on what really mattered–the students getting in touch.

Additionally, the easy to use and understand analytics told the team everything that mattered and just how much the university was helping people.

The customer experience was something that particularly stood out with staff seeing faster processes around handling call information between queues and repeat calls.

During the Clearing period, 3,325 calls were taken with an average wait time of 32 seconds. Even more impressively, on the first—and busiest—day, the average wait time was no longer than ten seconds.

“From an IT perspective, customer experience is a key thing,” said Ged Attwood, Head of Operations. “We're always looking at it and trying to improve our services. We tend to look to quality and customer experience before costs because that is a key driving force to improve. 8x8 is helping us to achieve that.”