Impact Snapshot
Empire State University spans more than a dozen satellite locations across the state of New York, serving primarily adult learners — 67% of their students are between the ages of 25 and 49. Empire State University is committed to supporting students by helping them develop individualized degree programs designed to fit the unique backgrounds and experiences of each student.
Mary Austin, director of 1Stop Student Services at the Empire State University, had been hunting for the right student engagement technology as the next step in achieving their mission of empowering students to self-action, even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The college was fielding an exceptionally high number of questions from students during times of uncertainty and rapid change, and administrators knew they needed tools and resources aimed at helping Empire State University’s students (spread out across every region of New York state) seek and find information with ease. And when the Empire State University team attended an presentation for Ocelot One, the Unified Student Lifecycle Engagement Platform, they knew they were on the right track.
Positioned to fill a significant void by giving students access to supplemental support around the clock, including an extensive library of knowlege-based articles and informative videos, the Empire State University team knew they needed a solution that required minimal support from university employees. A major factor in their choice to partner with Ocelot was a backend easy enough for someone without a software engineering degree to navigate.
Ocelot’s highly engaged service team provided the external support Empire State University needed to ensure that the new solution would successfully launch without overwhelming the university’s IT department. The service team also provides ongoing support and oversight.
Not only was the solution easy to program and embed within the college’s website, but the support during implementation was so seamless that the team was able to launch Ocelot One in just two months, significantly earlier than the initial planned timeline.
With Ocelot One powering student communications via Virtual Assistant, Empire State University was positioned to fill a significant void, giving students access to supplemental support around the clock, including an extensive library of knowledge-based articles and informative videos. These resources encouraged students to become more engaged and self-serving along their educational journey.
To help promote the new student-preferred communication channel across campus, Empire State University named their Virtual Assistant after the school’s mascot, a bluebird named “Blue” and produced a lighthearted video introducing the “newest call center team member” and shared it across multiple communication channels to increase awareness.
With their new AI-powered tools and technology in place, the Empire State University team were ready to reap the benefits, especially with summer term starting up.
Summer is Empire State University’s header term, marking the starting point of the school’s annual financial aid cycle. Both the 1Stop and financial aid offices anticipate a barrage of questions during this time, but at the beginning of the Summer 2021 term there was a palpable difference.
“It was probably two or three days before the term started,” says Michelle Campbell, Empire State University’s director of financial aid. “[My team] came to me and said, ‘I think something’s wrong. I think something’s not working right, because students aren’t here. There must be something big that didn’t happen for everything to be so quiet.’ But it was actually the opposite. It was that everything was working. Students knew exactly what they needed ahead of time.”
The team at Empire State University was ready to pop the champagne corks. The seamless (and quiet) start to the term meant they’d found a winning combination to effectively serve and support students.
On top of the decrease in call and appointment volume, the team has quickly learned that they can leverage the Ocelot platform’s backend to access data that provides valuable insight into student needs and concerns.
Recently, the 1Stop team found themselves discussing the accessibility of course selection information on the website. Rather than making an educated guess about the effectiveness of the current formatting, the Empire State University team turned to Ocelot One.
The team quickly pulled student inquiry reports and determined that the Virtual Assistant had engaged in 74 conversations about course scheduling since going live.
The number informed the team’s decision — information on class registration needed to be easier for students to find. This data led the college to an extensive webpage overhaul, using Ocelot One to help identify opportunities for places where 1Stop could reduce content bloat.
While there was an initial concern that driving students away from phones and toward AI-powered support would cause them to feel less connected to the college, they quickly learned otherwise. The Empire State University team found that the drop in call volume allowed both teams to finally pursue initiatives and projects they knew would improve the student experience.
Chapman University leverages Ocelot One to engage students and centralize cross-campus support, giving students the confidence and guidance to navigate their higher education journey at every stage!
FSW looked to Ocelot’s AI-powered Communication Platform for its multi-channel communications strategy with the goal of moving students from the phone channel to SMS texting and then to chatbot and live chat.
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