With the cap on student numbers soon to be lifted, many institutions are hoping that Clearing will become less of a frenetic last chance saloon, and more of a measured late application process. But these are still late applications that need to be dealt with promptly and professionally. In order to secure fee income, student recruitment targets need to be met. But competition is fierce.
Continue reading Make a success of clearing and student engagement with C3
In C3 tradition, here’s a bit of festive fun. We hope you enjoy our Christmas video – hopefully you’ll recognise a few faces.
For your amusement, we have also included links below to our previous festive videos.
We wish you all a Very Happy Christmas and we’ll hopefully see you soon.
2013 – C3 staff carry out the Macareindeer
2012 – C3 staff venture into a Winter Wonderland
C3 is attending UCISA’s Converged Network and Telephony event next month.
The theme for the event is meeting the challenges associated with the transition to a converged network – something C3 has considerable experience in having assisted a number of universities, including the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge and London metropolitan, in their transition to IP.
C3 will be discussing the challenge of Clearing and showcasing Contact, their multichannel contact centre solution.
The event takes place 29 October, at Austin Court, Birmingham.
For more information and to register for the event please visit the UCISA website.
Manx Telecom has launched Self-Service top-ups for its pay as you go mobile customers. The new service, built using C3’s Fusion IVR Software, makes it easier for subscribers to add credit to their account. The user simply calls the service, and then follows the recorded instructions to key in the top-up amount required, followed by credit or debit card details.
The service also allows customers to top-up other mobiles for friends and family, quickly and easily, and without the need to wait to speak to an operator. C3’s voice recognition application enables customers to move quickly through the menu and top up their account for a prompt and professional top-up service. This has considerably improved the process, particularly for Smartphone users who often struggle with DTMF key press options.
Manx Telecom is committed to improving the customer experience and using C3’s IVR development software, Fusion, is able to develop and launch new services that support this aim.
Fusion is a game-changing tool that enables anyone to create and launch IVR scripts within minutes, supporting companies such as Manx Telecom in being innovative and testing new services in response to changing market conditions.
Emma Walker, Head of Customer Care at Manx Telecom, said: “This new service is part of our continued drive to improve the services we offer. With automated top-ups it’s immediate, available 24x7x365 and there’s no need to wait to speak to an operator. It’s a much more efficient, saving customers valuable time, and allows our customer services team to concentrate on delivering support and advice on the increasing range of services and products we provide. This is just one of several changes we’re looking to introduce over the coming months to improve customer service experience.”
Manx Telecom has a dual site fully redundant SIP-connected IVR system at its site in the Isle of Man, running a number of core C3 applications such as voicemail, unified messaging and a number of IVR services. The PCI-Compliant C3 system integrates seamlessly with Manx back-office and gives the team access to advanced development tools as well as real-time subscriber analytics.
GCI, a privately owned information technology provider, has chosen multichannel communication software specialist, C3, as one of its key technology partners.
The two companies will be working together to develop a range of multichannel communication for GCIs vertical markets. The focus will initially be on rolling out a hosted contact centre solution, which utilises C3’s IVR capabilities, to give end users more control over the management of their system.
The partnership first sees GCI update its legacy Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems with a 600 SIP-channel C3 platform, which will be installed on virtualised servers at multiple GCI datacenters.
The geographically redundant system gives GCI access to a number of C3 applications, including Call Recording, Voice Recognition, Multichannel Contact Centre and IVR Scripting. The platform can be extended to support PCI Compliant billing across all channels.
“The aim of this long-term partnership is to enable GCI and C3 to jointly develop new technology for a rapidly changing communications market,” said John Wood, C3 Sales and Marketing Director.
“With our infrastructure and UK-based development team, we can support GCI in reducing costs, improving efficiency and, most importantly, maintaining its status as a market leader in hosted communication solutions.”
C3’s technology will enable GCI to improve existing services for end customer, with new user-friendly capabilities e.g. voice recognition navigation, dynamic call recording, and customer-facing web applets.
Paul Ceaser, the Head of Voice Operations at GCI said: “The platform, which will integrate with GCIs Microsoft Lync and Broadsoft solutions, will also support a range of off-the-shelf products for Voice, SMS, Email, Web Chat and Social Media applications. These applications will be easily customised via GUI front ends, and white-labelled by GCI.
“GCI constantly strives to provide its customers and partners with innovative, dynamic and value creating services. The partnership with C3 will deliver the next set of intelligent voice products providing end users with a powerful, flexible and efficient platform whilst avoiding expensive capital investments.”
The university Clearing process is more pressurised than ever before. In order to secure fee income, student recruitment targets need to be met. But competition is fierce.
It is crucial that universities engage with as many prospective students as possible and provide them with the right information at the right time. This can be a challenge; dealing with and resourcing the unpredictable nature of call volumes.
To solve this issue, university telecoms teams have traditionally provisioned additional spare capacity to handle this one-off spike in demand. However, paying for lines and infrastructure that are only in use for one month out of 12 is a costly approach.
Other universities have experimented with outsourcing the call overspill to cloud providers but, with thousands of pounds of income at stake, they can be understandably nervous about giving up control over those calls to third party providers.
C3 offers a cost-effective and flexible on-demand contact centre to manage the annual Clearing peak. Our software can be deployed on your network, giving you additional capacity and call control for the duration of Clearing. So, you are only paying for what you use.
The C3 contact centre software captures, queues and routes calls, ensuring that each caller speaks to the designated member of staff as fast as possible. With ‘burstable’ licensing, it is possible to increase capacity on the C3 contact centre temporarily and simply scale the system – up or down – to match the demands of clearing, as well as other peaks in traffic.
If you want more information on our Clearing application please email sales@c3.co.uk.