Middlesex University London
Client context
London-based Middlesex University is rated one of the top public universities in the capital. Its main campus is located in Hendon, England, but it also has overseas campuses in Dubai, Mauritius, and Malta.
With over 35,000 students on its roster, the site’s IT team manage approximately 6,000 tech devices across the estate – alongside telephony, service desk queries, and software deployment.
The institution has been a customer of ours since 2011 and is currently transitioning to the latest version of our Tiger Prism workplace analytics software.
The team harnesses our cloud-based technology to help the university effectively navigate the clearing period – the establishment’s busiest time of year in the academic calendar, where it receives 2,000-2,500 calls per day. As a result of the software, they are able to obtain and analyse call information to ensure consistent service delivery and positive caller experience across the three-day project.
Sector Education
Employees 1,900
Students 35,000+
Location Hendon campus, UK
Workplace analytics
- Call response times
- Call volume/duration
- Call reporting
Client goals
Universities face huge pressure during clearing and Middlesex University is no different. The military-like operation sees over 150 phones and computers assembled and tested, ready to receive between 4,000 and 6,000 inbound calls over the three days – from all corners of the globe.
If the operation fails due to technological issues – meaning calls are missed – this quickly runs into millions of pounds in a matter of minutes.
This means that ensuring all calls are answered quickly at all times is a priority for the project leads, as well as preventing any technological downtime and managing staffing resource – especially during peak times.
It’s vital that Middlesex University can provide a seamless clearing experience for students, but they can only do this if they have oversight of the inbound call data. And that’s where Tiger’s technology comes in.
Tiger response
Collaborating closely with Middlesex University’s clearing team, a specialist dashboard has been set up, which is available across the app on the project officers’ phones, and on a large screen in the clearing room itself.
This helps the call operators and key decision-makers to have visibility – seeing how many calls are coming in and being answered, in real time.
Our cloud solution sends regular reports to the clearing leads – enabling the teams to uncover the peak call periods and helping them to prevent any hold times by managing resource internally to make sure they have enough staff to manage demand.
The combination of live dashboards and reporting helps the university to see if and when intervention is needed – giving them a clear, complete picture of the clearing operations. Helping Middlesex University’s team to identify technological issues within its clearing system.
Business impact
Tiger’s analytics software has equipped the university with the data it needs to know if there are any technological or operational bottlenecks preventing the clearing process from running smoothly, helping to save millions of pounds each year.
If the phone lines are down or there is a connection issue, the team needs to be aware of it in real-time, or it’s the equivalent of losing £20,000 per call, per minute.
Other operations have resulted in:
- Rectifying a call drop-off issue, which saw a pattern of callers hanging up after 45 seconds. The IT team knew there was nothing wrong with the tech set up, and found this correlated with the end of the university’s pre-recorded welcome message which was causing students to cancel the call.
This led to the institution re-writing and recording the start of the automated message – seeing the initial problem disappear. - Diagnosing call termination issues during clearing. One year, the team identified that calls were automatically ending after five minutes. Using the Tiger reports to view the call stats, this enabled them to call their service provider, who identified the fault and fixed it rapidly.
- Assisting with wider Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) decision-making throughout the year. Tiger’s analytics solution is also used regularly to help the institution manage its tech estate. With monthly reports examining call spikes and international calls, the IT team has oversight of any anomalous behaviour – allowing them to take action and have the right conversations accordingly.
“…Clearing is the most important project I take part in every year – and it cannot fail, as this has a massive reputational and financial impact on the university. Tiger’s dashboards and reporting are critical in making sure everything happens as it should and operates like a well-oiled machine – we couldn’t run clearing as effectively without it.”
“…The Middlesex University London core clearing operation was very successful, with no major issues to deal with.
…As always, the information sent by Tiger was immensely useful, and the dashboard was excellent.”
“…I have to reiterate my thanks to the whole team in moving the planned maintenance to the 1st of September too, allowing us to ensure we had the data we needed throughout the entire operation.”
“…Due to late BTEC results, we also worked the Sunday to assist those students, and again, the information from Tiger helped us — both remotely and on the ground.”
“…In total, over the four days we took in excess of 3,000 calls to the different inbound lines.”