I’m So Much Cooler Online Live Chat Advising Initiative is Music to the Ears of Students

2012 Annual ConferenceOctober 4-7, 2012Gaylord Opryland

Nashville, Tennessee

Today’s Co-Presenters

George BudelisStudent Development Specialist

Advising, Career and Transfer Services

Bonnie Sulzbach Director for

Advising, Career and Transfer Services

• Harford Community College was founded in 1957. The campus occupies 332 acres in Bel Air, Maryland, and has 21 buildings, 85+ Programs of Study and 100% wireless capability.

• Full-time credit enrollment– (FY 2012) 9,756 students

• First-time, full-time credit enrollment– (FY 2012) 2,278 students

http://www.harford.edu/IR/QuickFacts/FACTS.asp?FP=Pres

Who are we?

Credit Degrees and Programs Offered

Associate of Arts

(AA)

Associate of Sciences

(AS)

Associate of Applied Sciences

(AAS)

Associate of Arts in Teaching

(AAT)

Certificates

More than 85 programs of study

• Today’s students are tough customers, they want everything "yesterday".

• We have the daunting task of providing excellent customer service, while at the same time meeting students’ academic needs.

• With more students than ever, it is a challenge to meet these expectations.

Enhancing the Student’s Experience

Implementation of Live Chat Advising

• Piloting the program• Choosing chat software• Access to Live Chat Advising• Staffing• Training• Available Hours• Professional Communication

• Scenarios & Scripts• Quality Assurance• Marketing• Tracking in Banner• Forms• Outcomes and

Assessment

•We chose February-April to introduce the Live Chat Advising feature to avoid the peak advising period to work out the “bugs” prior to Summer/Fall registration.

Piloting the Program

•We purchased a 1 year subscription to ProvideSupport.com for 3 advisors at a cost of less than $200. This allowed us to have 3 generic user accounts. Once the pilot proved successful, we upgraded to 10 accounts and we were able to personalize user accounts.

Choosing Chat Software

•In order to provide a complete range of advising services to currently enrolled students, we created the Live Chat Advising Channel on the students’ web portal, “OwlNet”. This insured authenticity of the student because this Channel is only available through the enrolled students' web portal.

Access to Live Chat Advising

•Live Chat Advising is staffed by at least one advisor, however, during peak advising, we have the ability to add advisors, as needed. Live chat advisors are not available to take walk-in students when assigned to live chat advising duty.Staffing

•Chat advisors’ training consisted of several components. Chat advisors were trained on the use of ProvideSupport.com software. They viewed a live demo and participated in several mock live chat advising sessions with other advisors acting as students. Criteria for selecting advisors to provide this service included experience with academic and career advising, typing speed, comfort and familiarity with chat technology.

Training•Live chat advising is available from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. By selecting this window we hoped to serve working students who may wish to use this feature during their lunch hour, and other students who may find it convenient. This is also a traditionally busy time of day for our department, so serving some students through live chat helped to reduce walk-in advising volume.

Available Hours

• Live Chat Advisors are expected to begin and end each chat session with a standard greeting and closing message to ensure consistency and professionalism. Students may use “text speak” (brb, lol, etc.), advisors will refrain from using such abbreviations.

Professional Communicati

on

• The implementation team met to create several scenarios and scripts to include the use of “canned responses”, standard greeting and closing, busy message, and closing to be used in the event student does not respond with a certain time frame. We continually update the script depending on the time of year.

Scenarios & Scripts

• Live chat advising is monitored on a regular basis to assure accuracy of information provided, and for professionalism. Students receive a message at the end of the session asking them to provide instant feedback regarding their session.

Quality Assurance

•We did very little advertising for the initial Pilot, since we were new at this, we wanted to ease into it. Once we were ready to go full force, we created banner ads, table tents, and marketed to students on Facebook, and in mass emails.

Marketing to Students

•Special Banner contact codes were created so we could easily track activity. When documenting the advising session in SPACMNT, chat advisors easily copy and paste the relevant portions of the chat transcript into the Banner comment field.

Tracking in Banner

•Live chat advising is designed to be a substitute for “in-person” advising, so we have forms available online when signatures are required, (for example, academically restricted students need advisor’s approval to register).

Forms

Standard Greeting

• Hello, a Harford Community College Academic Advisor will be with you shortly. Please have your HCC Student ID (H#) number available. Your Live Chat Advisor will not be able to chat with you if you cannot identify yourself with your HCC Student ID #.

• Hello, welcome to Live Chat Advising, my name is _________. To get us started, please provide me with your H #.

OK, please give me a moment while I look up your records. Thank you, I have retrieved your record, to verify, please give me your address and phone number, and tell me what courses you are taking this semester.

• Thank you, how may I help you today?

Busy Message

• I’m sorry for the wait, due to the number of students in the cue; our response time may be a bit longer. If you do not wish to wait, feel free to email your question to askanadvisor@harford.edu or you may meet with an academic advisor during our regularly scheduled walk in hours. Click here for hours of operation, www.harford.edu/Advising.

Standard Closing(s)

• May I assist you with anything else before we end our chat session today?

• Thank you for using Live Chat Advising. Have a great day!

• Please take a moment at the end of the session to fill out a brief satisfaction survey.

Closing to be used when a student has not responded within a certain time frame

• I’m sorry, but I have to end this chat because there is a delay in your response to me.

Feel free to email your question to

askanadvisor@harford.edu, or you may meet with an academic advisor during our regularly scheduled walk in hours.

For hours of operation, www.harford.edu/Advising.

Abuse of Chat Response

• I’m sorry, but I have to end this chat with you because you are refusing to abide by the procedures that I’ve outlined during our chat session.

Feel free to email your question to askanadvisor@harford.edu, or you may meet with an academic advisor during our regularly scheduled walk in hours.

For hours of operation, www.harford.edu/Advising.

Goodbye.

Goal #1 –To enhance the

student’s experience through an alternate delivery method that may be appealing to

them.

Goal #2 – To deliver advising

more efficiently and effectively using our available resources.

The effectiveness of this initiative will be

assessed through two forms of measurement.

1. Satisfaction Survey2.Live Chat Call Volume

metrics

Outcomes & Assessment -Implementation Goals

Contact Information

• George Budelis gbudelis@harford.edu

• Bonnie Sulzbachbsulzbach@harford.edu