By Jonny Feldman, Head of HSG

Help Support and Guidance are running a pilot chat service until the 30th January to investigate if this is a service that students would favour. Currently students use walk-ups more than phone or email – and with up to 34% of logins occurring outside of the learning centre, chat might fill a service gap. Even in the learning centres, for those who would like to retain their seats or have a way to walk, chat could offer a significant improvement on walk-up help.

We have spoken to a number of external companies and HEIs, including  Sky, Trent Water, Cardiff and Exeter Universities, to see how they have fared with this. We are lucky to have just bought Bomgar which, as well as offering remote desktop support functionality, has a well thought of and configurable chat client too. Thank you everyone who has had a hand in helping configure this with us.

During the pilot, students in EMB, Cantor and the pool rooms in the collegiate learning centre will be able to access a ‘Chat to help’ icon and it will be interesting to see how much this is used. We have had interest from other areas and LIS will be joining the pilot too to supplement their out of hours chat service via ‘question point’ (well done WALE for helping them sort this).  International student support have also shown an interest and are watching closely what is happening.

In February, we will be assessing how this has gone and seeing if we should be progressing with a full service. Please get in touch with Miles Seecharan for more information.