policy & reform
Winning ways
Past winners of ATEM awards come from Australia and New Zealand.
Here Campus Review profiles two of last year’ s winners as we lead up to this year’ s awards.
Last year two organisations shared the Oracle / Right Now award for Excellence in Student Administration and Customer Service. The award was won by the University of Melbourne’ s Student Service delivery team and Otago Polytechnic’ s IT Service Help Desk.
The University of Melbourne In 2011, the Student Service delivery team in Melbourne embarked on a mission to improve customer service throughout student services, led by Tammy Fitzgerald and Zane Sadat.
The key strategy for achieving improvement was engaging hundreds of staff across faculties, graduate schools and central services in developing and implementing a student service commitment.
Other important initiatives included the establishment of a Contact Centre for the university; training programs and materials( printed, online, videos featuring their own staff) which developed individual and collective capacity in handling enquiries; the negotiation of agreed referral protocols; ongoing professional development, including an annual conference and networking opportunities for front-line staff; and a monthly service commitment award which recognised high performance.
Through a Students @ Work initiative to employ Melbourne students on campus, more than 100 students have been employed as part-time enquiries staff, which has informed the university’ s customer service practice as well as providing students with valuable employment experience.
The exercise was informed by the CBSA benchmarking program which involves the random calling and assessment of staff. The university was ranked 4th throughout Australia in the 2011 benchmarking survey.( ATEM and CBSA conduct benchmarking surveys each year prior to the Student Services Centre Conferences in May.)
Top: Peter Castleton, chair of the judging panel and Meaghan Ford, from Uni Promo, present the marketing award to David Crai and his team from ACU Bottom: Daniel Harrison from Oracle, Tammy Fitzgerald and Zane Sadat, from the University of Melbourne, Denise Adamson representing Colin Armstrong, and the highly-commended recipients
What the judges said“ This is an exemplary, comprehensively consultative, substantial change program effecting a very large institution. Clients participate in service delivery, notably affirming people with impairments and outlying social positioning. It employs overtly high-level implementation to encourage support. The single student service notion is extended from classic internal functional locations to any internal and external point where students receive service.”
Otago Polytechnic Colin Armstrong and his team at Otago Polytechnic were confronted with a problem. Student feedback was showing clearly that students were unhappy with the level of technical service offered by the Dunedin institution.
More and more students were learning at a distance and this perception of service was affecting student retention and completion rates.
Otago had moved through a phase of consolidation, which involved all aspects of the operation but which put pressure on the IT section to have an exemplar service.
“ Removing the technological support barriers our students have to their learning, means getting on and doing what they need to do,” explained Armstrong, the IT Service Help Desk support manager.
The IT Service Help Desk was developed in 2009 and consisted of a very small team.
The desk works on an 0800 number and as people ring in they are placed in an automatic call distribution queue system. Each call is logged, allowing for tracking later. The installation of a remote control access system allows the team to take control of a client’ s machine, where problems are usually fixed easily and often.
The aim of the team is to close a job on the first call and to have a philosophy of doing the best they can, as fast as they can, and to give clients options.
The Otago Polytechnic has witnessed a shift in the emphasis of the ISS area which has become people-friendly, more collaborative and empathetic.
The service is IT-based and, as far as Otago Polytechnic knows, is the only ITP in New Zealand offering this service free to both its staff and students.
What the judges said“ This is a compact IT service group, intelligently using limited resources, to provide lively personal first-aid support. It responds 7 / 7 to rationally appraised needs of dispersed students – with supportive referral to local commercial advanced service providers. It shows creative, insightful, quality administration providing speedy, high-value support, responsive client feedback.” n
www. campusreview. com. au March 2013 | 25