With exams finally over and students home for the holidays, the summer period can seem quiet around the university. It was during this time, however, that thousands of students attempted to secure places on university courses through clearing. Clearing is the process by which students who have not already secured a University place can apply to Universities who have availability.
A number of teams within Information Services were involved in clearing, from running the call centre to advertising the clearing service. In addition to the usual compliment of staff, a large number of temporary staff were also brought in through Unitemps to support the process.
IT Training
With more than 200 permanent and temporary staff taking an active role in clearing, training was essential to ensure that the process ran smoothly. The Business Systems Training Team developed a range of training sessions to meet the different requirements of all involved. This included how to use the telephone system and the online tools as well as skills for dealing with a range of different scenarios including emotional callers and those who don’t need clearing at all.
The culmination of this training saw a full ‘dress rehearsal’ with every staff member at their stations and external callers pretending to be students. It was a nervous time for the training team as they hoped that all of the training would come together and staff would be able to fulfil their roles.
Web Team
The Web Team created, maintained and developed a clearing web form. This web form was used by the front line staff to gather information about the callers’ qualifications and to determine whether or not they may be suitable for the course or should be declined. In some cases, the form could also enable our front line staff to make an offer to the caller straight away, helping to ensure that we secured the best applicants for our courses.
To ensure that the form provided the correct information to our front line staff, a complex set of rules had to be defined to instruct the form as to the entry requirements for each course. This means that our admissions team could enter the tariff and other requirements for each course and the form would display the correct script for our front line staff to read.
Where callers were referred to departments, the web form was seamlessly transferred from our front line staff to our admissions tutors, who could pick up the call where our front line staff stopped. It then stored all of the data ready for the central admissions team to continue with the admissions processes.
Telecoms
Clearing rooms needed to be set up, and over 300 workstations prepared with appropriate software packages. Throughout the process the call volume was exceptionally high, with over 7600 calls answered on the first day alone. This is more than were fielded in either of the previous two years. In order to safeguard against faults during clearing, Telecoms set up a backup phone system to run alongside the main Solidus system.. This backup was used this year, as the Solidus application experienced a major fault and had to be referred back to the manufacturer. It was due to the secondary system installed by the Telecoms team that clearing was able to proceed.
Service Desk
As with any large IT process, a great deal of support was needed from the Service Desk to fix any of the issues arising with the equipment and software. Each temporary member of staff hired to take calls in the clearing rooms needed an IT account created for them, which is handled by the Service Desk. The Service Desk were also responsible for assisting with the testing of the various systems used in clearing before it began to ensure a smooth service. Service Desk staff were on hand throughout the process to assist the call handlers as necessary.
