This week while preparing for FETC 2015, I thought back to an article that Education Week published in December on digital content delivery and interoperability. With E-Learning software topping most educator’s shopping lists this year, interoperability is bound to be one of the many hot discussion topics heard on the exhibit floors during the show. So, I thought it might be a good idea to revisit the article here.

A handful of large school districts (like Houston Independent School District) have begun aggressively pushing big publishers of education-based digital content to begin revamping the way they deliver instructional materials—a movement which will upend the long-established purchasing patterns that typically keep educators from accessing materials from other vendors.

The movement is reminiscent of several interoperability debates in the IT/Tech world right now, and we’re seeing many school districts lead the charge in declaring that they will not do business with publishers who refuse to become interoperable.

It’s a huge step on the part of the school districts. A shift towards interoperability means many things. It can revolutionize how content-delivery systems interact with each other. It could also transform how schools purchase and consume digital content, allowing districts to procure small "chunks" of content (individual chapters, lessons or videos, for example) from multiple vendors, perhaps through licensing agreements, rather than rely on yearlong or grade-span textbook series from a single publisher.

Finding Interoperability

As FETC helps kick off trade show season and as school districts start moving into 2015, it may be time to begin evaluating content technologies that can easily manage both the interoperable content coming from publishers as well as any other content types/formats.

Here are a few things to look for as you begin to evaluate new content distribution platforms:

“Create-ivity” and Customizability

Content distribution platforms (a.k.a. Learning Management Systems) traditionally employ a structured sequential learning method that drives students to move through class material in a predefined order. The best interoperable technologies are going to offer more by way of on-demand flexibility—letting teachers either create or select content relevant to each student’s learning experience, helping achieve the best possible results in the classroom.

A fully interoperable, flexible content management and distribution solution should give professors and students the option to employ either a traditional sequential learning model or the ability create a truly customized learning experience by accessing individual content pieces in multiple formats (video, presentation, documents, etc.) that the school has either licensed from multiple publishers or created on its own.

Collaboration and Interactivity

There is an increased focus on collaboration in higher education in order to prepare students for today’s collaborative and adaptive work environments. The right Learning Management System should provide the social interaction to which students have become accustomed, and should include tools that allow students and teachers to create discussion feeds and workgroups for classroom-based conversations and project-based learning.

Today’s Learning Management Systems should allow students to work collaboratively and efficiently together in real-time to complete class assignments and projects, and also include tools that allow interactive experiences with the course content,  including online components and hybrid learning strategies for flipped-classroom style learning.

“Integrate-ability” and Modernity

There are many challenges facing educators as classroom technology continues to advance.  That’s why a content distribution platform should be easy to use, should integrate existing educational resources, and should be integrate-able with your existing district technologies (think Unified Communications solutions, virtualized or cloud storage systems, or analytics technologies).

Collaborative Content Management

School districts like Houston’s are drawing lines in the sand—demanding more from the publishers creating K-12 content. The same demands will now need to be made of the technologists creating the distribution solutions.

That said, NEC is going to be at FETC this week demoing several of our education solutions—including our Collaborative Content Management solution, a cloud-based Learning Management System which is fully interoperable, flexible, and collaborative right out of the box.

If you’d like to learn more about NEC’s Collaborative Content Management before the show, check out our webinar below.

If you happen to be at FETC this week, stop by booth #1268 to chat with an NEC expert during normal Expo hours.

 

Digital Publishing is a contentious subject among educators. The transition between paper and digital has created gray areas and thoughts/opinions on the transformation to digital range widely and evolve consistently. With the kick-off of the 2014 EDUCAUSE Conference under way it's a good time to take a look at the arguments presented. Do we burn the textbook? Does digital serve a higher purpose?

Digital vs. Print Publishing

Until November 2007 when Amazon introduced the Kindle, the only viable means of book distribution was paper. Any author who wanted to reach a mass audience needed a paper distribution partner. Any author could hire his or her own editor and his or her own cover design artist; he or she could even hire a printing press to create the actual books. The one service he or she couldn't hire out was distribution. And publishers didn't offer distribution as an a-la-carte service. The package service was always the best value, and there was no viable alternative otherwise.

In textbook publishing, there has been little alternative to buying a traditional book from the publishers—particularly in Higher Education. Each professor expects their students to have access to the required text. Knowing that professors require specific texts, publishers are able to control the market (in an effort to stop borrowing and downloading illegal versions, etc.). They do this by publishing “updated” editions to their texts fairly frequently. It’s an effort on their part to “force” students to buy new textbooks—whether the content needs refreshing or not. 

Textbook costs increased an average of 186 percent from 1986 to 2005—a jump that saw several students dropping out of college simply because they couldn’t afford the books they needed for classes. Digital publishing clearly posed a solution to the issue and has pushed the industry ever-closer to its tipping point.

Major publishers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past few years buying up software companies and building new digital divisions, betting that the future will bring an expanded role for digital publishers in higher education.

So far, publishers are only producing a limited number of titles in these born-digital formats, and the number of professors assigning them is relatively small. Only about 2 percent of textbooks sold at college bookstores are fully digital titles, according to a survey of 940 bookstores run by Follett Higher Education Group.

As these new kinds of textbooks catch on, they raise questions about how much control publishers have over curriculum and the teaching process. It seems that the time has come for a different publishing model, and with it, real disruption.

Colleges as Publishers

Publishers shouldn’t be the only organizations building these new textbooks. In fact, the most qualified organizations to be writing said texts are colleges themselves.

Modern digital content management technologies can help universities not only transition from print to digital, but can also help the transition into self-publishing as well. Implementation is always key when it comes to new technology and, particularly with digital publishing, rash or jumpy behavior can kill the vision before it’s realized.

Preparing appropriate digital initiatives, trainings, and continued professional development are all essential to creating buy-in and getting users to feel comfortable using the content management technology to begin creating digitally powered course curricula.  But the payoff is definitely worth it.

 Self-publishing is great for universities and students alike. With universities as publishers, Higher Ed institutions start regaining control of the content used in their courses. Additional benefits include new revenue streams and the ability to provide students much better rates for books than students were able to get on their own, even for used textbooks.

Plus, with the right technology, those who wanted to read the textbook on paper could print out the electronic version or pay an additional fee to buy an old-fashioned copy—a book.

Communication, Collaboration, and Reciprocity

In readying myself for the conference, I had the opportunity to read The Other End of the Scale: Re-Thinking the Digital Experience in Higher Education on the EDUCAUSE Review. The article is full of conversation-starters, but one key message stood out.

“It is time to rethink the digital experience in higher education: we have a chance not only to reimagine our encounters with the large scale but also to embrace our opportunities at the other end of the scale.”

The move to digital learning has been defined by the “rhetoric of openness,” meaning the success or failure of any digital movement in higher-education is going to depend on collaboration—between faculty, students, and IT professionals. The same can be said of digital publishing. Failure on the part of textbook publishers to advance digital publishing could be attributed to the lack of collaboration between the publishers and the institutions, as well as the institutions and the students in order to determine which digital texts work properly and which don’t.

Improved communications are often a key factor in facilitating this type of collaboration. Continuing to ask “what kind of engagement do we want from our students,” and simultaneously, “how are they engaging with us now,” can help create the communicative foundation universities need to be able to collaborate properly with students.  

As the landscape of learning continues to grow and change, and more of our communications become mobile, institutions will need to be able to provide easy, immediate access to all forms of communication on all devices.

Rather than using an old communications system that requires University IT departments to support each device individually, wouldn’t it make sense to employ an agnostic system—something that can be tailored to different users, and one that can be re-used repeatedly?

A Unified Communications-enabled solution can be that device agnostic system for which you’re looking. Not only can it effectively tie professors, students, and faculty together across devices, it can also simultaneously create a recurring revenue model for your institution—licenses can “rented” and then easily re-used as students graduate.

The technologies that will be most successful, however, are those that can combine the collaboration and digital publishing features to provide one, self-sustaining, self-informing communications solution. A collaborative content management system can centralize all processes  and give universities one location from which students can get all requisite information and content,  can access university-oriented social sharing/collaboration tools, and can be directly connected with faculty and professors through advanced UC functionality.

A collaborative content management system can effectively tie everything together, giving universities total control so students and teachers can continue making the same sort of epistemological advances that are today, made in the traditional classroom with the traditional textbook.

To learn more about Collaborative Content Management, check out our webinar and demo recording below. If you happen to be at EDUCAUSE this week, stop by booth 709 to chat with an NEC expert during normal Expo hours.

This year’s 43rd Annual ACUTA conference and exhibition, which focuses on technology and communications in higher education, will be taking place near NEC headquarters here in Dallas, Texas. 

Conferences like ACUTA used to be simple. You registered, showed up for the event, went to a few workshops, got some free snacks, had a conversation or two, and went home. It was easy—one or two days of learning, and then back to work.

But social media has changed all of that. The nature of conferences has changed from local affairs to global showcases with interactions between attendees occurring well before and after the event itself takes place.

There are still those attendees though, who are so focused on getting as many in-person interactions out of their workshops, sessions, and conversations as they can, that they forget— or choose not—to utilize social media during the actual show.

This, however, wouldn’t be the best way of going about things. Why? Because social media tools actually empower you to accelerate the networking process, make higher-quality connections, and feel more comfortable in a setting that, for many, can be challenging (i.e. lost luggage, a restless night, can’t find your co-workers etc.). 

As local residents and longtime ACUTA attendees, here are our top five social media tips to help you get the most from your ACUTA conference time and money:

1. Join the pre-party.

As social media use continues to be embraced by the public, we see online conversations start well before the conference convenes—usually weeks in advance. The ACUTA event has several social media outlets that you can utilize to follow the interactive discussions taking place before the conference. These tools also will usually allow you to see who will be attending, to set up pre-conference meetings, to find out what the trending/hot topics are, and to judge the overall traction the conference is or is not gaining among your influencers and those you influence.

With tools like Twitter or the official conference app, you can actually “meet” several people in advance of the show.

Several ACUTA conversations are already taking place on LinkedIn, Twitter – where the official show hashtag is #AcutaConference14, and Facebook.

2. Eavesdrop on the other sessions.

Most of us study the conference agenda well before the show date and select sessions or full tracks that pique our interest. But what happens when the panel starts and you quickly realize the topic or viewpoint is not what you were interested in originally?

Social media gives you the opportunity to eavesdrop on the digital conversations happening in the other session rooms. This gives you the opportunity to discover more energetic exchanges that are equally or more relevant to your business than the one you are attending.

3. Make better contacts.

Social media gives you the opportunity to get to know new contacts before you ever sit down with them. With tools like Twitter and LinkedIn, you can research their backgrounds to find where your common interests are, what conversations they are most active in, and learn a little about them as attendees. Then, when you schedule a time to grab a cup of coffee or talk shop between sessions, the time both of you spend together will be much more productive than it would have been pre-research.

This gives you the opportunity to attend unofficial gatherings of attendees that usually take place at conferences. Many times these can be some of the most satisfying and productive networking events at the show. It also gives you the opportunity to stay in touch (on social media) long after the event, which in turn nurtures more meaningful deals and partnerships.

4. Have fun record-keeping.

Think of social media as taking notes, with the advantage of having dozens or even hundreds of others also taking notes and sharing them with you. This means your travel log is full of robust information that you can take back to other members of your team that didn’t get the opportunity to attend.

Social media also gives you the chance to pick up quotes and statistics from the sessions you don’t have the time to attend, which can help spark further discussions and connections. And finally, attendees can use social media to interact directly with speakers. So you get an additional opportunity to chime in with your point of view, agree or disagree, and have a robust discussion with leading thought leaders in your industry.

5. Discuss after the show.

Social media can actually help you manage your new contacts after the show, should you meet other attendees from whose technology experiences you want to learn more (or vice-versa). You can also use it to keep in touch with vendors whom you’ve met during the show. With so many different ways of keeping engaged—Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter—you can easily maintain new contacts virtually, at least until you can get back to your office and follow-up with them more officially.

If you are interested in discussing with us the advancement of higher education communications and collaboration technologies, then you should visit us this year at the show—taking place at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Dallas.

Attendees and Speakers who will be Live Tweeting from #AcutaConference14:

• @Acuta
• @MarcHebner
• @msreynolds55
• @NEC_Channels
• @NEC_Consultants
• @RGareissWaleski

If you are following a participant or vendor this year, or would like to learn more about NEC, give us a shout-out in the comments.  

Unified Communications (UC) solutions are not a single product or component, but an integrated set of features. Wikipedia defines UC as the integration of real-time communication services such as instant messaging (chat), presence, IP telephony, video conferencing, data sharing (including Interactive White Boards), and call control with non-real-time communication services such as unified messaging (integrated voicemail, e-mail, SMS and fax), but there are dozens of additional features available, and it seems like more are being added every day.

How can your school district sort through the myriad of options and know which ones are the most essential, process-changing features they should focus on? Working with districts around the country, we’ve identified the 5 essential tools for schools that every UC implementation should include:

1) Enhanced 911 (E911)
By law, school districts are required to provide location information to their Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) when a 911 call is placed. Providing that information is indeed essential, but it only scratches the surface of what your UC E911 service should provide. In addition to automatically updating the PSAP, E911 should also provide your emergency response team and internal designees with capabilities that allow your staff to assist first responders and address potential emergencies in real time.

• Instant screen-pop notifications: Whenever a 911 call is placed, notification messages should “pop up” on the appropriate administration or resource officer screens. These messages can identify the exact time, location, current duration of the call, and offer additional options for response.
• Listen and Barge-in: After being alerted of an in-progress 911 call, this feature allows designated District staff to listen to the call and can even choose to “barge in” and assist the conversation directly. 

2) Voice Recording
Recording of incoming lines is another important part of a school district’s complete UC solution. Recording can be implemented in a variety of ways across schools for administration and support staff usage. The most flexible systems use concurrent licensing to allow for more economical and easier configuration, and these recording features can be applied to entire trunks, individual lines, or across the entire system for on-demand recording and playback. The two major impacts to your district are in security and internal management.

• Security: With recording of all district and school office incoming calls either by default or on-demand, any threats or incidents that occur utilizing the phone system will be captured and available for incident management and post-incident review. Combining recording features with your E911 functionality to automatically record every 911 call adds another layer of emergency response capability to your system.
• Staff and Parent Management: Allowing for on-demand or constant recording for staff and district offices means that any situations involving a parent, student, or staff members can be quickly evaluated and shared internally with appropriate individuals. Dealing with angry parents, addressing staff learning and management issues can all be easier when you have the actual conversations recorded and available.

3) Conferencing
While there’s a lot of talk about integrating video and web conferencing for distance learning, asynchronous teaching and other pedagogy and matriculation related situations, even a basic audio conference bridge included now in most UC systems has tremendous potential to impact your school’s communications and security. Districts’ Emergency Response Teams (ERT’s) are using simple conference bridges to set up non-public DID numbers specifically for incident communication. Those numbers are shared only with the ERT, designated staff, and local first responders as part of their school emergency preparedness policies and manuals. When an incident occurs, no one is left scrambling to get the right people on the phone or calling out to individuals such as the Chief of Police or Fire Marshall; they are ready and available on a custom and secure conference bridge to keep everyone up-to-date. Adding web and video capabilities means that physical plant information, floor plans, and even live video feed can be shared instantly and easily as well.

4) Single Number Reach
“User-centric communication” sounds like just another buzzword phrase, until you start thinking about the implications within your school. Trying to get an important call through to a specific teacher or staff member can be an exercise in frustration when you must consider schedules, room assignments, time of day, and other factors. With single number reach, the control of contact management is put into the system and the user’s hands; electronic staff directories with a single phone number per user will connect regardless of the class schedule using cell phones, desk phones, softphone on the PC or tablet, and can even ring home or other numbers – whatever the staff member and your telecom department allow for configuration. Adjusting contact endpoints based on time of day, room schedules, vacations, or even who it is that is calling is all possible with current UC technology, as is ringing several lines simultaneously. This can be combined with presence (allowing others to see scheduled status and location) and unified messaging (delivering voicemails to your email or other messaging software) for even more productivity and process gains.

5) Call Reporting
A component of UC that is often overlooked or minimized is the ability to generate call reports. Having an easy to use tool that allows comprehensive call management can make reporting an essential part of managing your telecom system. Call occurrence, quality, duration, full path (was it forwarded or transferred?) and other key metrics can all be used to reduce costs and manage usage. Reporting can provide detail about the operation of your system, can be organized and sorted by location or staff function, and can be a great way to manage expenses. Identifying over-usage of 411 calls, reporting on extended or repeat number dials, and highlighting long distance usage can all be used to assist in makeing administrative decisions. In one recent case, a faulty fax machine was found to be making repeat dials at all hours, costing the district thousands of dollars a year (and presumably untold frustration to the unlucky recipients)!

We understand that the number of available features and functions in modern Unified Communications (UC) systems can be daunting, but we hope this list can be of help when it comes time to make a decision about which system is best for you. In the meantime, an Education Subject Matter Expert is available to answer questions, perform webinars and consult directly with your team. If you’d like to explore more ways your district can enhance or extend communications and security in schools, email michael.kastler@necam.com to schedule a call.

The Association for Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education (ACUTA)

NEC is in full force at the second full day of the 42^nd Annual ACUTA  conference and exhibition, which focuses on technology and communications in higher education. The show is taking place at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego, CA, until Wednesday.  

We are here at Booth 513 showcasing our portfolio of integrated solutions for higher education, which includes mobility, unified communications and cloud-based communications. You can also get real-time updates and photos from the show on Twitter via @NEC_Channels.

After a successful first day at ACUTA 2013 yesterday, we learned a few tips and tricks on who’s who in the “Twitterverse.”

• First off, if you’re not following the official ACUTA 2013 hash tag, you need to check it out - #acutaconference13. You’ll find ample content from show participants and vendors, session takeways and key conversations just waiting for your input. If you were unable to attend ACUTA 2013, following the official hash tag will help keep you updated on all of the happenings at the show. 

• On the same note, the conference’s official Twitter page, @ACUTA, contains updated session and event information. 

• ACUTA’s president for 2014, and an NEC customer, Mark Reynolds, is tweeting his personal ACUTA 2013 observations at @msreynolds55 (pictured below).

• Check out John Gallant, chief content officer of IDG, on Twitter @JohnGallant1. He moderated the conference keynote, “Envisioning the New IT Organization Through the Eyes of an Extraordinary CIO,” yesterday (pictured below).  

• Another must-follow is Marty Parker and the great minds with @UCStrategies. There’s always something to learn from their unique insight on Unified Communications.

• This year, ACUTA introduced a new social medium called Rockzi. Just visit www.acuta.org/rockzi to keep tabs of the latest industry news from ACUTA participants and vendors.  

Are you following a participant or vendor at ACUTA 2013 that deserves a shoutout? Let us know by commenting below.  

Part II

Long hold times and staff inefficiency are just a few flaws that can affect customer service and experience. In our last post we highlighted the first five of ten ways you can put your contact center to work for you by using it to enhance your campus. Keep reading as we reveal 6-10. 

6. Agent Assignment Flexibility and Statistics

When your contact center has flexible agent assignment capability, the administrative offices can increase or decrease staff available to take calls during peak activity times. There are two methods to accomplish this objective: process and technology.

With the process method, any individual who takes calls is established as an “agent”. At normal times, only those whose primary job function includes answering incoming queries log in to the contact center application. As call volume increases, additional personnel can log in to take calls and relieve any backlog, and log off when the call volume decreases. A unified communications (UC) enabled desktop application for agents simplifies this process by allowing agents to easily view the information that they need through a desktop client.

With the technology solution, again, any individual who takes calls is established as an “agent”. The contact center application is programmed to send calls to back-up personnel only when certain thresholds are met – the number of waiting callers or the longest time any caller has currently waited. The benefit of this technology solution is that it tends to respond more quickly and reliably to spikes in the call volume.

7. Auto Attendant and Campus Directory

The Auto Attendant provides call routing capabilities for the campus. You may recognize this feature as the familiar situation where the caller hears a greeting message and is given up to ten options to begin directing the call – for example, “For Administrative Offices, press 1, Health Center press 2, etc.” Auto Attendant options can be processed several ways: play an automated message, transfer to an extension number or contact center, or further qualify with additional prompts.

You can implement an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system to produce messages that provide answers to common questions. When you do this, it takes the load off of staff, giving them more time to provide assistance to other callers.

8. Mobile and Remote Representatives

You can easily allow your campus representatives to become mobile by merging your contact center technology with wireless technology. Doing so improves efficiency and means that help desk staffers can be reached while providing in-person computer repair, and bookstore personnel can walk around the store to check stock on an item. The “Remote Agent” capability allows staff to be reached even when out of the office. This is an ideal way to provide flexibility to your staff and assure that critical help lines remain open regardless of any campus closure.

9. Outbound: Preview and Power Dialing

Outbound contact center capabilities can improve the accuracy and effectiveness of a fund raising campaign. When the dialing process is automated, time spent on wrong numbers is significantly reduced. You can go a step further and integrate with a database of historical donations, thereby streamlining the information gathering process so solicitation can begin immediately.

Once a campus representative becomes available for the next call, preview dialing enables that individual to preview the information regarding the next call prior to the placement of that call. With the press of a button, the system dials the call. Power dialing is similar, but automatically dials the next call when the representative becomes available, while simultaneously displaying the preview information.

10. Self-Service Applications (IVR and Web)

You can further enhance your contact center efficiency by transferring tasks to self-service applications enabled to work over IVR or web interface. Good candidates for self service are those which integrate a user interface with data in various campus databases, for example, student and personnel records, library services, etc. Self-service applications allow users to access and work with distributed content from a single interface.

A few self service opportunities on a campus include:

• admissions and registration processing and status 
• health and medical database information 
• order status for recent purchases
• password reset 
• time sheets and time tracking 
• benefits administration

You can rest assured that security concerns are addressed by establishing the strongest possible authentication and identity management measures. Single sign-on and identity management applications enable the user to login to multiple locations through a single login manager with a single unique password.
When evaluating applications for potential self-service implementation, the campus should evaluate not just the cost savings but also the improvement in customer service by enabling users to have access at their convenience.

Check out our previous post where we listed the first five ways a contact center can help improve your campus, and, to learn more about the benefits your campus can reap with a UC enabled contact center, download the white paper.

Part 1

We’ve all been that frustrated caller on hold waiting to speak to a “real” person who can address our concerns. While waiting, you’ve probably thought of all the ways your experience could be improved if they would just answer the one or two quick questions you wish to ask. While you can’t get any of your time back, the good news is, there are several contact center features that can minimize your customer’s frustration, and, as a result enhance their experience. It’s no secret that a consolidated, centralized contact center can increase staff efficiency, but how is this increased efficiency accomplished? The following list highlights the first five of ten ways contact centers enhance institutions of higher learning.

1. Contact Routing for Multimedia Contacts

Multimedia contact centers enable students, prospective students and other customers to interact with campus offices however they please – whether by phone, e-mail or Web chat. Regardless of the medium they choose, call routing ensures each student receives the priority attention they deserve.

For example, many campuses may sell tickets to campus events over the Internet. Potential customers include not only students, faculty and staff, but members of the community as well. If your campus contact center offers customers an extra opportunity to have their questions answered by offering a web chat capability, you can very well decrease the number of abandoned shopping carts, while increasing the number of completed sales and simultaneously providing opportunities for personnel in the ticket office to better serve customers.

For offices taking calls from existing students, faculty and staff, contacts can be routed based on campus identification (ID) numbers. This number enables the call to be routed, along with caller information from a stored database, to the most appropriate representative. For prospective students or other callers, the Automatic Number Identification (ANI – typically the caller’s phone number) can be used to route or set a priority to the call.

2. Response Library and E-mail Auto-Response

A knowledge-based library houses responses to frequently asked questions (FAQ). Use of these pre-defined entries can simplify the representative’s job and significantly speed the process of creating responses.

One useful element to store in the knowledge library is a response to be automatically delivered to the sender of a message to give them an idea of when their inquiry may receive attention. When an e-mail is received, the multimedia application should automatically reply with a message acknowledging receipt and committing to a personalized response in a specified timeframe. In doing this, the campus has a much greater opportunity to meet expectations – and met expectations translate into customer satisfaction.

3. Screen Pop

When a caller can be identified by either campus ID or phone number, database information for that caller can be presented in a pop-up window to the representative at the time the call is received. This feature is known as “screen pop” and eliminates the time required for a representative to collect key information from the caller, resulting in increased productivity and improved accuracy.

4. Queue Announcements

At a time of high call volume (which is typical in contact centers), it is inevitable that some callers will wind up in queue waiting to speak to a campus representative. However, implementing queue announcements can discourage callers from hanging up by offering other contact options and providing useful information.
Did you know that a caller in queue is using campus resources – ports in the communications infrastructure, IVR resources, and potentially long distance resources? If this caller becomes frustrated with the wait, hangs up and calls back later, then the campus pays for twice as many resources for that one caller. This costly situation can be avoided by providing information to set the expectation for the caller, making them much less likely to “abandon” their call while waiting in queue. In either case, resources are not wasted since the campus only pays for the caller to wait in queue one time.

5. Callback

Callback can help improve caller satisfaction. In addition, callbacks decrease indirect costs and direct costs. Indirect costs are associated with the ports required to keep calls in queue. Direct costs are reduced as the campus does not incur toll charges for the time the call remains in queue awaiting an answer. The callback capability offers to return the call when an agent becomes available, thus preserving the caller’s place in the queue. The result – reduced resources required to support the call on hold. Additionally, callers can be offered a return call at the time when their call would normally have been answered, or they are offered the opportunity to request a callback at a specific time.

Whether you’re looking to increase productivity and efficiency, enhance student experience, or make a financial impact, your campus or university may have much to gain from a successfully implemented contact center. We’ve just scratched the surface on the benefits you can reap, to learn more, check back for 6-10 and download the White Paper. 

Traditional contact centers: you know, the ones where rows of agents wearing headsets process large volumes of calls? While they’re extremely functional in certain venues, they do not have much of a place in Higher Education. Higher Education is a channel where contact center technology should be used to improve the student experience, streamline administrative processes, increase sales for bookstores and ticket offices, support fund raising campaigns, and enhance the college or university as a whole. To accomplish these goals, contact centers in higher education have a unique profile that influences both practices and communications architecture.

Collegiate contact centers are “casual” or “informal”, meaning they are typically made up of small groups staffed by representatives for whom answering the phone is not their primary job function. For example, these staffers must be enabled to work on projects, attend meetings and carry out other duties that will require them to be away from their desk and, therefore, their phone. Administrative, auxiliary and academic offices around the campus all experience fluctuations in demand for services in relation to the time of year and the progress in the current semester. Contact center technology in a campus or university setting can accomplish unique objectives for the various types of departments as well as accommodate temporary expansions that occur as a result of fluctuations in volume. Contact center opportunities exist in a number of administrative offices; let’s first take a look at how Administration and Student Services are impacted.

As a new semester begins, administrative offices can be overwhelmed by phone calls from students trying to make schedule adjustments, complete financial aid requirements or settle into a residence hall. These offices don’t have the man power to handle the high call volume that results. Ultimately, this means inconvenient back-ups, callers waiting on hold for long periods of time, and growing frustrations. In addition, it takes more time and resources to handle callers during periods of long wait times. Callers are likely to get frustrated, hang up, and call again at a later time. This ties up communications resources twice – once for each call. If the contact center is able to assist the caller the first time, it not only improves customer service, it increases cost effectiveness. Additionally, a beneficial feature of contact centers is the ability to utilize queue announcements which can be used to encourage callers to continue to wait – including providing an estimated wait time or the number of callers currently ahead in the queue.

While adding more staff on a whim is likely the desirable option, it is not typically the most feasible. To accommodate this, there are several contact center technologies available that allow campus departments to respond to the demand of their resources:

• UC-enabled desktop applications allow others to login as an agent and help out as needed. For example, administrative and advising staff can login when call volume is high and view the availability/presence of other co-workers to transfer calls as needed or conference someone in with just a click of a button. 
• Multilevel/multilingual auto-attendant allows you to build a script where the campus can provide answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) or redirect callers to the university Web site to find the information they’re seeking. This can help to decrease the overall call volume that reaches the administrative staff. 
• Applications that deliver phone calls, e-mail and Web chats. Simply hire temporary student workers to help process calls during times of heavy volume. The training is quick and easy, and once trained, these students can provide basic information and execute simple requests so experienced staffers can handle the more complex issues and calls. 
• On each phone or desktop, a display can inform the individual of the number of calls waiting and the time that the longest call has currently waited. This information notifies other department members that the call volume is increasing and enables them to login and take calls until the volume starts to subside again. Where departments can collaborate, the contact center application can be designed to deliver calls to an alternate department in the case of extreme call volumes. This enables a department or group that is potentially less busy at a given moment to help take care of the callers waiting for assistance. 

Campus administrative offices are the “face of the campus” for currently enrolled students as well as prospective students, parents and visitors – all of whom represent potential customers, so to speak. As a result, how calls are handled will directly impact the experience of a current student as well as influence the decisions of prospective students. Both groups represent potential revenue to the campus, so there is little to no room for error or inefficiency. For example, the goodwill of the existing student may eventually influence future monetary donations, and the decision of the prospective student will determine whether their tuition dollars help fund this institution. It’s an ongoing cycle, and, therefore customer service is directly related to “the bottom line”. Download the white paper below to learn more about how the advanced technology of contact centers can improve the “bottom line” in your institute of higher learning.

What do you do when you need to deliver time-sensitive information to hundreds, or even thousands of people? Do you have a mass notification system in place to help get the word out quickly and efficiently? There are times when alerts sent to the general population of a hospital, school or business are not only helpful, but necessary. In a hospital setting, implementing a mass notification system extends beyond emergencies – doctors, nurses and administrative staff can also be alerted of shift changes or increased availability. This can be accomplished with little to no effort when a mass notification system is in place. With the systems that are available today, the same message can be broadcast to literally thousands of people. For those messages that need to be dispersed quickly, mass communication sent to personal devices is becoming very popular. Within minutes, an important alert can be sent in a timely fashion to everyone who is affected by the content of the message.

Mass Communication Alerts

Historically, the reason for a mass communication has been emergency related. Mass communication alerts have typically been sent for extreme weather bulletins or when there is a dangerous situation taking place at a specific location, such as a particular building on a campus or business site. While mass notification systems incorporate a variety of response mechanisms to allow educational institutions to improve their communications in the event of an emergency, the systems can also be used to improve the business process of hospitals as well as major corporations.

Now that alerts have become broader in scope, it is becoming more common to see alerts about:

1. Event Notification: to alert of upcoming, canceled, or even impromptu events
2. Attendance alerts: in an educational setting, this can alert parents and guardians when a student is tardy or absent.
3. News Updates: about a particular item that affects the group.
4. Building Closure: for maintenance reasons or an outage of electricity.
5. Ad-hoc meetings: when it is necessary to gather a group of individuals 

There are multiple methods of communicating messages, from text messages and e-mail alerts to delivering a voice message. Read on to determine the differences and assess for yourself which would be most successful within your organization.

How are messages delivered?

Most systems offer features which allow you to call recipients and leave a pre-recorded message. Seems simple, but on one hand, when a call is received from an unknown phone number, it is often ignored or sent to voice mail. Thus, defeating the whole purpose of the mass notification, as the event may have already taken place once the recipient retrieves the voice mail.  In response to this, some systems have taken steps to alleviate this problem and skip calls altogether and send a text message. This approach could prove more successful, since research shows that when a text is received, it is often checked sooner than a voice mail even from a known caller. It is quicker to check when the phone signal is weak and the receiver can still get the full text message. The New York Times references data from uReach Technologies, who operates the voice messaging systems of a leading wireless provider. The data states that over 30 percent of voice messages go unheard for a minimum of three days. But what about wireless subscribers who do not use or even have the ability to send or receive text messages?

This is where multi-modal systems come in and prove to be most effective. Leading manufacturers now offer multi-modal systems, which allow you to use multiple delivery methods to communicate your message. Whether you want to send a voice call, e-mail or text, these multi-modal systems can handle it all. Some systems have the ability to know when a voicemail system answers and can leave a message but also continue to contact other devices simultaneously, avoiding any downtime in getting the word out. Are you the information officer for a large school district and wondering how you will know if students, faculty and parents received your message? Or maybe you work in a hospital setting and you’re experience a staff shortage so you need to alert team members who are not currently in the hospital. How will you know if they’ve received word that they’re needed? Problem solved – when you select a mass notification system that offers full reporting capabilities so you can always keep track of who received your message.

Deploying: Premise-based vs. hosted       

        
If cost is your major concern, then a premise-based system will prove to be more cost-effective than hosted with delivering mass notification alerts. Emergency notification lends itself to utilizing larger numbers of lines and shared equipment to get critical information out to big groups as rapidly as possible, and in those cases hosted solutions may be ideal.  For ongoing, less time-sensitive communications however, a small investment in technology can lead to large returns in stakeholder experience and loyalty.  By using trunks and lines that are already paid for, in most cases there will be no additional operational expenditure to send these messages. Regardless of your preferred method, it is necessary to take the steps to implement a mass communications system, as early warning is critical since most people in these environments cannot be mobilized easily.

BYOD Part 2-Defining Devices

Now that we’ve identified users, let’s take a look at available devices and best application practices. It is critical to keep in mind the differences in the way each of these devices are used.

Laptops: Laptops can be relatively easy to incorporate, as they offer standardized network and Internet access. But are the benefits greater than the risks? Laptops are easy to turn off, and easy to detect on your network. In an educational setting, teachers can clearly monitor laptop usage and if you are designing access to your student portal, creating a website accessible by all operating systems and most browsers is a relatively simple task. On the risk side, however, laptops can be easy vectors for malware and viruses. If left unchecked, these viruses can spread throughout your school infrastructure and affect anyone who is connected.

Smart phones: While voice usage of phones is decreasing sharply among youth, data and text usage is rising – and fast. Take a look here to see how dramatically data services usage is increasing among teens and young adults. Have your schools faced this issue yet? If not, it is likely they will soon, how will you prepare for this?

Smart phones can be difficult to manage on campus due to the fact that there are so many different capabilities and operating systems associated with them. Designing an app for the Apple OS and Blackberry may make most of your staff happy, but what about the percentage who favor Android? Websites, even those designed for mobile devices, have also caused more issues than they resolve for even the most common devices.

Tablets: Similar to laptops, these multi-tasking devices allow for document management, communication and collaboration. Tablets can run a wide range of applications and software, whether it is for educational purposes, general productivity or for entertainment and personal use. Although similar to laptops, tablets tend to be more secure from a virus and malware standpoint, and less useful for writing and collaboration without accessories such as a keyboard. Tablets are associated with a more narrow set of operating systems (e.g., Apple OS or Android), but with Microsoft’s foray into the arena in 2012, and various other vendors such as HP and RIM continuing to fine-tune their own offerings, this may not be the case for much longer.

So where will you go from here? You can see that there’s a lot to consider before moving ahead, and as is the case with most major projects, the more preparation and greater understanding of adapting to your user needs, the better your chances at successful implementation.