The student journey: Eliminating pain points

Briefing background

The drive to improve student satisfaction and improve retention rates is leading to huge amounts of activity. This involves efforts to blueprint the student journey, from enrolment to graduation (and sometimes, as far as alumni), so that all pain points are understood and can be addressed.

Universities are taking a user-centred approach in service design that requires interdepartmental involvement in order to join the dots. These massive programmes of change include data, systems, processes, communication patterns and relationships. It’s such a vast undertaking that it’s not surprising many institutions are yet to embark on it or reach a point where they are even able to contemplate it. So what else can be done more quickly to improve the student journey? Acknowledging common pain points can help you make choices about how to quickly improve the processes and support in place.

Do you recognise these pain points?

The pain points themselves 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; can include fear that they aren’t understanding feedback and, at worst, experiencing obstacles towards their graduation
• Difficulty in accessing resources; problems experienced getting what’s needed, or frustration on missing out
• Information or support missing at critical points; may involve lack of personalised information when instead students feel swamped by unmanageable amounts of generic information

The above pain points tend to be common culprits in frustrating or alienating students in some way. But change programmes that address them can literally take years, during which time decision making is slowed and new initiatives put on hold. What can be achieved in a shorter timespan that pays huge dividends in improving student engagement and outcomes, and also helps deliver on the wider institutional objectives?

Often technology can help – the right systems empower students, but they have to be highly usable and recognise the circumstances of each student and what they need. 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 book what they need. It’s perfect for:

> Institutions that want their students to better utilise the range of resources available to them, for better awareness of what’s available and increased usage. This often includes multimedia equipment to facilitate more media-rich academic output and creativity

> Students that require tailored access permissions to resources that recognise their year, course or module

 A silver bullet for improving the student journey?

As no two institutions are organised in the same way, we would have to say there’s no ‘one size fits all’ solution or silver bullet. That’s why we’ve made connect2 highly customisable and able to integrate with your student record system. And we are on hand to get you up and running as a new customer so that the system quickly delivers. It’s not a silver bullet but it’s as close as you can get for quickly improving service delivery.

You’ll join over 100 other 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’. And many universities expand connect2 throughout their institutions, as one department learns of the advantages from the other. You’ll be in good company and will very quickly reap the benefits of better informed and motivated students.

Take a closer look at connect2 – simply complete the form provided or contact:

Lorensbergs on 01992 415505 or email enquiries@lorensbergs.co.uk