Three major milestones have successfully been achieved during the Autumn as part of building relationships with our prospective students to encourage conversion.
Our new customer relationship management system Achiever, is being phased in across a range of services to provide a personalised and targeted service to current and prospective students. This system also has the ability to track enquirers from their first point of contact with the university, through to enrolment and into student life.
This functionality has now been rolled out to academic and professional service staff involved in recruitment across all four faculties with almost 55,000 enquiries captured. For the first time we can ensure that enquiries are being fulfilled across the university, monitor response times and the quality of service. This information is now being used for conversion activity including inviting undergraduate and postgraduate enquirers to events as well as sending targeted communications to keep them informed and in touch with Sheffield Hallam.
Recruitment visits are a key part of converting enquirers and applicants to students. Last year 83% of students who visited our Course Information Days went on to accept our offer either as a firm or insurance choice with 56.8% enrolling in September and we welcomed almost 23,000 visitors to our open days, including 9,500 prospective students.
We have also been busy reviewing our admissions processes to make them more effective and efficient. Last year’s undergraduate electronic processing pilot with SBS has been extended to standard offer making for a range of ACES and D&S courses. The next step is to work with admissions tutors to develop the process for non-standard offer making which will be phased in later in the cycle.
The first phase of relationship management focussed on pre-entry students is now being extended to QESS Student Services who will be implementing the system on a phased basis from January 2014 across Careers and Employment, Student Financial Support, Advice and Information, International Student Support, Sheffield Regional Assessment Centre (SRAC), Disabled Student Support services and Student Wellbeing.
Faculty Student Services have been shadowing QESS and are represented within the governance structure. This joined up approach will have significant benefits for the way the University provides support to students.
For more information contact:
Pre-entry: Steph Watt s.watt@shu.ac.uk 4869
Current students: Claire Gandy c.gandy@shu.ack 6616
Faculty Student Services: j.nanson@shu.ac.uk 5547