Case Study: Torrens University

CUSTOMER PROFILE

01 THE BEFORE

Facilitating continued evolution and growth

Torrens University is Australia’s fastest-growing private university with more than 24,000 students across 10 campuses in Australia, New Zealand, and China. Its contact center is supported by 165 agents managing over 1,000 monthly student interactions. The contact center team manages all voice and digital student enquiries and engagements, supporting students throughout the duration of their studies over multiple years, from their first engagement with the institution to graduation and post-graduate experiences.

After growing its footprint and operations through the acquisition of multiple educational institutions, Torrens University needed to consolidate its disparate technology platforms into a single, cloud-based contact center solution. In particular, it needed a solution that delivered the necessary flexibility and scalability to grow with its continued expansion while simultaneously delivering seamless student experiences across omnichannel environments.

02 DESIRE TO CHANGE

Assessing available market solutions

Torrens University relied on outdated, on-premises telephony systems that differed across its operations. In some cases, its contact center agents from different business lines used personal telephones to manage untracked one-to-one calls, as well as a single telephone number for multiple channels. To mitigate the challenges and risks that came with integrating new businesses that relied on disparate platforms, Torrens University needed to move its brands to a single system.

As a priority, the university needed a solution that offered more comprehensive visibility into its operations across all businesses while providing deeper insights into student interactions. Additionally, Torrens University sought a more advanced omnichannel environment than its incumbent solution, including the potential to replace its chatbot with live chat capabilities.

Throughout the pandemic, Torrens University also identified a change in the needs of its students, including how they preferred to engage with the institution, and their level of experience with in-person and online learning. Consequently, the university needed to deliver greater flexibility for students to communicate on their preferred channels while keeping them engaged throughout their experience with the institution.

03 THE SOLUTION

The contact center solution that makes the grade

After assessing multiple platforms available in market, Torrens University identified NICE CXone as the ideal platform for its evolving needs. CXone matched the maturity that Torrens University needed while also offering essential integrations, including its customer relationship management (CRM) platform. It also offered the right mix of functionality and price for the university’s budget. Together with implementation partner NEC, NICE supported the Torrens University deployment of CXone, rolling out its functionality within six months.

04 THE RESULTS

A+ cloud-based telephony delivers frictionless student experiences

Since implementing CXone, Torrens University has achieved significant improvements across its operations, including more efficient workflows among its contact center teams. CXone has eliminated multiple steps from student support processes, enabling agents to resolve student enquiries faster and more efficiently.

CXone has also delivered more comprehensive insights and reporting capabilities for the Torrens University team. This allows the team to achieve greater oversight into the types of student enquiries as well as customer behaviors and sentiment, gaining deeper insights lets the team maintain more tangible business growth.

The introduction of live chat functionality in combination with CXone’s outbound dialer has expanded the university’s capability to respond to multiple student enquiries at once. Previously, its agents were limited to managing one-to-one interactions via phone or email. By using live chat, Torrens University’s agents can operate as one-to-many, resulting in efficiency gains of two to three times its previous capabilities.

This functionality also expands the contact options for students, giving them more control and ensuring they can engage with the contact center through easy and asynchronous communication whenever they want, including during classes, as needed.

With the support of deeper insights, Torrens University can also explore the continued use of its chatbot and better leverage its data, and insights to identify when and where chatbot automation is appropriate, including for out-of-hours operations or for specific use cases.

05 THE FUTURE

Top-of-the-class solution for the future

With CXone, Torrens University has a solid foundation from which it can continue to evolve student experiences with confidence. This has been especially important as more students join the university after emerging from pandemic-related lockdowns and the changed ways of learning during their secondary education.

The university is currently exploring opportunities to expand the use of live chat beyond the student support team and to make it available more broadly. Additionally, the university is investigating the potential to invest further in developing a more meaningful chatbot to support its operations.

Fundamentally, the university plans to uncover more meaningful, actionable insights from its data. With a goal to drive enhanced engagement with students and agents alike, Torrens University is next exploring the benefits of sentiment analysis.