The student journey: Eliminating pain points with Connect2
Briefing background
The drive to improve student satisfaction and improve retention rates is leading to huge amounts of activity at some universities. This involves efforts to blueprint the student journey, from enrollment to graduation (and sometimes, as far as alumni), so that all pain points are understood and can be addressed.
However, there are some common pain points outlined in this briefing that, once acknowledged, can help you make faster choices about how to more quickly improve the processes in place for students. This includes choosing the right supporting technology.
Recognizing and tackling student pain points
Do you recognise these pain points? They often manifest themselves in similar ways, especially when they involve the student as the end-user of a service. Here, pain points are experienced either as fails or waits in service delivery:
- Points or places where students as the ‘customer’ feel that processes require too much effort or take too much time
- Confusion over what is happening in a process or what they are supposed to be doing; at worst, students fear they are experiencing obstacles towards graduation
- Difficulty in accessing resources; problems experienced getting what’s needed, or frustration on missing out
- Information or support missing at critical points; this may involve lack of personalized information when instead students feel swamped by unmanageable amounts of generic information
The above pain points are common culprits in frustrating or alienating students in some way. The good news is that the right technology can pay huge dividends in improving student satisfaction in a relatively short timescale.
How Connect2 improves service delivery
The right system empowers students to the point where the above instances of confusion or hindrance no longer arise. To do this, it has to be highly usable and recognize the circumstances of each student. Here’s one from Lorensbergs…
Connect2 is an online system that provides students with self-service access to physical resource discovery, real-time information on availability, and opportunity to reserve what they need. It’s perfect for:
- Students that require access to specialized resources to support their learning
- Institutions that want their students to better understand and utilize the range of resources available to them. This often includes multimedia equipment to facilitate more media-rich academic output and creativity
A silver bullet for improving the student journey?
No two institutions are organized in the same way, and different cohorts of students have varying needs. So there’s no ‘silver bullet’ as such to ‘fixing’ the student journey. However, Connect2 has two key qualities that causes it to be extremely effective in improving the student experience.
Firstly, it’s highly customizable to present student resources in exactly the way they need them. Secondly, it integrates with your student record system recognizing each student’s year, course and modules of study so they won’t be frustrated by irrelevant information. It’s not a silver bullet but it’s as close as you can get for quickly improving service delivery.
What’s more, we’re on hand to get new customers up and running so that the system quickly delivers and continues to do so.
As a Lorensbergs customer you’ll join over 150 universities and colleges who are proud Connect2 users, with happier staff, and all-importantly, more satisfied students. In fact, our customers tell us that 88% of their student users rate Connect2 as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’. You’ll be in good company and will very quickly reap the benefits of better informed and motivated students.
More about Connect2
Connect2 enables academic institutions to enhance the student experience, empowering students to help themselves with access to resource information and an online self-service reservation facility. The Connect2 solution is integrated into the operations of over 150 universities and colleges.
