A technological evolution has occurred among the modern educational institution, with the rise of the Internet making institutional websites the driving force of student interaction and information delivery. For many Administrators and academic institutions however the operational and financial benefits the web offers have made any “debate” over its merit last no longer than a few minutes, let alone a few decades.

1. IR Knowledge Se ri es
6 Reasons Why
Web Self-Service Makes A Leaner,
More Responsive Institution
And 5 Schools That Made It Happen
Penn State University
University of Wisconsin
Harvard University Extension School
York University
Cuyahoga Community College
4,000 hours annually, or almost 3 full-time
employees for a typical institution = the hard costs
of unanswered online queries and their impact on
in-bound queries to the admissions office.

2. 1
6 Reasons Why Web Self-Service
Makes A Leaner, More Responsive Institution
& 5 Schools That Made It Happen
“The times they are a changin’.” – Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan understood technology’s role in a
changing world. His infamous switch from acoustic
to electric guitar set off a fiery debate among Dylan
fans – a debate that is bantered about among music
aficionados everywhere, even today.
A similar technological evolution has occurred
among the modern educational institution, with
the rise of the Internet making institutional websites the driving force of student interaction and
information delivery. For many Administrators
and academic institutions however the operational
and financial benefits the web offers have made
any “debate” over its merit last no longer than a
few minutes, let alone a few decades.
In this paper, we present six key reasons why
educational institutions are turning to their most
valuable informational asset – their own web site –
to stay lean and responsive, and better address the
demands of their constituents, even as enrollment
demands soar and budgets swoon.
Rising Expectations Amidst Falling Budgets
The changing times that educational institutions
now face are characterised by an ever-increasing
demand to do more with less. Getting and keeping
good students has never been more competitive.
Government funding continues to decline. Donors
are tapped out, and existing endowments are
running dry.
So how are modern higher education institutions
able to thrive is such an environment? Salvation
comes, in part, with the help of new technologies that
1) ease the burden on Administrative staff,
2) reduce the overall cost of serving current and
prospective students, and
3) simultaneously enhance the student
experience as students interact with the
institution.
The stage upon which these efficiencies play out is
your institution’s web site. The online environment
is far and away the preferred venue for interacting
with schools among your tech-savvy audience of
current (and future) students.
More and more colleges and universities are
recognising this preference, and making their web
sites the “first point of interaction” where students
go to quickly gather information and find answers
to problems – on their own – and with extremely
high levels of satisfaction.
This is the “doing more” part of the equation. The
“with less” part comes in when you understand the
cost savings to be had when web-based technologies
are used to reduce the inefficiencies that can
plague Enrollment, Student Services, Registrar
and other administrative departments in
higher-learning institutions today.

3. 2
6 Reasons Why Web Self-Service
Makes A Leaner, More Responsive Institution
& 5 Schools That Made It Happen
1. Today’s tech-savvy, impatient students
will not tolerate inefficiency.
When looking for information online, today’s
student demographic knows what they want.
With burning questions in mind, they are not
willing to hunt through your school’s web site
for answers, and picking up the phone to dial for
support is virtually foreign practice for them.
If their experiences on your web site begin to
hint at the need to hunt, they are likely to
simply stop and look elsewhere for answers.
What happens next? A current student may be
forced to email or phone your Admissions staff,
and incur costly one-on-one conversations to
answer the most elementary of questions – not
to mention leave them with a sub-optimal
experience. A prospective student may simply
visit another school’s web site and never return
to yours.
In short, with this impatient and web savvy
demographic, it is the institution – not the
prospective student – that ultimately suffers
from the limitations of the web site.
2. Inefficiencies in administrative operations
hold your school back.
Inefficiencies within Administration departments
are not hard to spot. One ubiquitous example is
the administrative staff that becomes mired in
repetitive phone conversations, or email
exchanges with students.
“We receive many phone calls and emails each
day from students asking the same questions,”
is a common refrain among Administrative
departments today.
To deal with this deluge of incoming emails, your
staff have likely taken a “cut and paste” approach
where, rather than typing out an answer, they
manually respond to emails by cutting and
pasting pre-written text answers to common
questions.
Any time savings are, of course, negligible,
because staff still exert considerable manual
effort that could otherwise be spent on more
“high value”, critical activity that drives results
– like evaluating new applications, and quickly
identifying top students.
3. The hard – and soft – costs of
administrative inefficiencies are staggering.
How many questions do staff at your institution
field in a single year? Consider the real cost
in staff hours of these interactions using this
real-world experience of Temple University
in Philadelphia. Temple University is a
comprehensive public research university,
and the 27th largest university in the United
States with a student body of 35,000 (25,000 of
whom are undergraduate students).
x
=
x
200 incoming requests per day, either by email
or phone
5 minutes average to respond to each request
16 hours 40 minutes per day
240 work days per year
TOTAL COST IN STAFF HOURS
= 4,000 hours per year,
or almost 3 full-time employees per year.
Note the above example only takes into
consideration the amount of requests that are
received by your institution. What about the
impact to your school of simply “losing” the
interest of those individuals who encountered
an inefficient web site and decided not to
take the extra effort to email or phone your
institution to continue their quest for
information?
We have some insight into this number using
more data from Temple University. Temple
enhanced their online user experience with the
addition of an intelligent answer agent feature.
(See the “Ask an Owl” feature at
http://www.temple.edu/undergrad/contact/)
Since implementation, the intelligent answer
agent has answered nearly a quarter of a
million questions for Temple. This averages to
over 500 incoming questions per day. From this,
we can assume that prior to leveraging the web
in this fashion; the school was missing out on the
opportunity to provide a positive experience in
over 300 instances each day!

4. 3
6 Reasons Why Web Self-Service
Makes A Leaner, More Responsive Institution
& 5 Schools That Made It Happen
4. Major costs savings can be realised
with advanced self-service technology
on your web site.
Advanced self-service technologies (also known
as “e-services”) streamline the online
experience for users. These e-services include
email, chat, click to call and instant answer agents.
What is an instant answer agent?
A web-based software solution, generally
posted on an institution’s web site, that
allows users to key in common questions
and provides answers in real-time.
Compared to phone support, these advanced
e-service technologies offer significant cost
savings, coupled with extremely high user
satisfaction scores.
Service Channel
Phone
Cost Per Interaction
up to $25
Email
$5 to $10
Chat
$5 to $7
Instant Answer
$1 or less
The Folly of Phone Support
Think phone-based support delivers a higher
quality “customer experience” for your
students? This is a common myth. When
students are online, they want answers to their
questions to be accessible immediately online,
not later over the phone.
Picking up the phone is seen as a chore and not
an ideal means of resolving elementary
questions or issues. The irony, of course, is that
most institutions incur maximum costs to
deliver what is actually a non-preferred service.
What Self-Service Is Not
It’s important to distinguish, however, that not all
“self-service” features result in high user
satisfaction.
A web site’s search feature – even a robust one - is
not an optimal self-service tool. Searching a phrase
like “tuition fees,” for example, can return
hundreds of search results, leaving the user no
better off. This is equivalent of taking someone into
a maze, leading him through the first few turns,
then leaving him to do the rest. Technically, you’ve
brought him closer to the end result, but there are
still endless frustrating options standing between
him and the desired outcome.
Likewise, online Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQs) pages are often an inefficient means of self
service. They are usually too sparsely populated
to be useful, or so comprehensive that they, as well,
require far too much exploration to get closer to
the answer.
5. Immediate ROI is just one benefit.
Cost savings that come from freeing up
administrative staff are directly measureable
on the bottom line, but this immediate ROI
is only the beginning of the benefits, other
soft benefits include:
Administrative staff can be freed to focus on
activities that contribute positively to the
school, like identifying top students from an
ever-increasing deluge of applications.
Cost savings ease the pressure on revenue
growth – pressure that often ends up in
mandated headcount increases when staff
resources and physical infrastructure are
already over-taxed. The University of British
Columbia eliminated the need for a planned
increase in headcount by 25 after adding
instant answer technology to their web site
(http://www.ubc.ca/).
Current and prospective students are just two
stakeholder groups who benefit from the
addition of efficient e-services. Staff and
faculty too can use these technologies to
quickly find answers within intranets.
As well, overburdened IT departments who
struggle to administer help desk services
(especially with the student influx each fall
can leverage the same technology to alleviate
the burden. Temple University and
Cincinnati State Technical and Community
College are two schools that use instant
answer technology to drastically reduce
emails, phone calls and in person visits to
their help desks.

5. 4
6 Reasons Why Web Self-Service
Makes A Leaner, More Responsive Institution
& 5 Schools That Made It Happen
6. Many other institutions have already figured
it out. (You needn’t reinvent the wheel.)
There are many examples of institutions that made
the online experience efficient and smooth
for students, and who are reaping the rewards.
Some universities that use advanced e-services
effectively on their web site are shown below:
Institution
1) Penn State University
Web Site
Penn State
World Campus
2) University of Wisconsin UWW Admissions
3) Harvard University
Extension School
Harvard University
Extension School
4) York University
York University
| Get answers to your
questions now.
5) Cuyahoga
Community College
Ask Tri-C
For More Information
For more information on cost effective ways to enhance
the customer experience at your organization contact:
Mike Hennessy
IntelliResponse
mike.hennessy@intelliresponse.com
About IntelliResponse
IntelliResponse enhances the multi-channel customer experience for
businesses and educational institutions via its Instant Answer Agent, a
question-and-answer software platform that allows web site visitors to ask
questions in natural language, and get the “One Right Answer”, regardless
of the hundreds of ways the question may be asked.
This industry leading On Demand software platform is used by both
consumers and contact center agents. With more than 200 live, customerfacing implementations answering 50 million+ questions with one right
answer, IntelliResponse is the gold standard in first line customer
experience management.
Some of the world’s most recognized corporate brands and higher
education institutions trust their customer experience management needs to
IntelliResponse - including ING Direct, TD Canada Trust, Scotiabank, Penn
State University, The Ohio State University, University of British Columbia
and Harvard University Extension School.
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