University of Manchester have recently created a new Student Services Centre which is intended as a ‘one-stop shop’ for supporting students in their interactions with the university.

The project was intended to focus specifically on the customer needs, and re-examined all the business processes involved in supporting these needs.

The SSC does:

Registration
Fee collection
Issue of swipe cards
Student loans
Hardship loans/funds
Awards
Bursaries
Scholarships
Examinations: timtabling orinstaion results
PG thesis dissertation administration
Academic transcripts
Degree certificates
Graduation ceremonies

Services not provided:
Academic advice
Accommodation
Careers
Student health
Counselling
Disability support
Chaplaincies

The ‘counter’ and ‘back office’ services are split, with face to face enquiries and email being dealt with at the counter, and phone enquiries plus office duties in the ‘back office’. The staff all wear uniforms (can’t imagine this at RHUL)

Also invested in a CRM system to support the SSC. The CRM solution was built on the Oracle CRM suite.

Finally, they have also introduced a student portal which gives access to the following services:
Self assessment for awards
FAQs
Request personal documents (e.g. Council Tax exemption forms, Confirmaton of attendance, Veririfaction of registration and course, and Transcripts)
View course units (can check their registration details)
Track progress (track thesis/dissertation submission)

I like the idea of requesting the documents, although I’m not sure why they send them by post rather than providing a pdf that can be printed off immediately – I guess they may need a university stamp or signature. These requests get put into the CRM, and is dealt with by the SSC staff. This is perhaps where we would have more problems at RHUL?

The Portal also allows the students to track the progress of the request through the CRM (and also track other things like thesis submission)

The most popular services are “Change Personal Details’, ‘Confirmation of Attendance’ and Council Tax exemption forms. Also interesting that there is very little use at weekends, and Monday seems to be the busiest day (although not by much).