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Transforming Your Web site Into a 24/7 Service Center
6/29/2004
The University of Houston was growing, and we had more current and prospective students asking questions about more things than ever. The volume of phone calls and e-mails we were getting began overwhelming our staff. And students were having a harder time getting the answers they needed.
Potentially, the Web offered the solution. If our Web site contained all the information that students needed, then phone and e-mail volume could be brought down to manageable levels. Plus, students would be able to find answers to their questions at 3:00 a.m. as easily as they could at 3:00 p.m.
However, several obstacles stand between any university and the Promised Land of Online Answers. Those obstacles include:
Navigation. Most university Web sites have a good deal of information already. The problem is that students can’t always find the needle they seek in the haystack of content.
Fragmentation. The various functional areas of a university—financial aid, registrar, bursar, athletics, academic departments—traditionally operate independently of each other. That makes it difficult, if not impossible, to manage information in a centralized manner.
Relevance. You can speculate about what you think students will want to know, but the effectiveness of your Web site depends on allowing students’ actual, documented information needs to drive your online content. Awareness. You can build it, but they still may not come. In addition to having all the information students need on the Web and making it easy for them to find, they have to know the information is there.
At UH, we overcame these obstacles with a combination of the right technology and the right strategy. After a review and a request for proposals, we determined that RightNow Service from RightNow Technologies would be our technology platform. RightNow enables us to build a knowledge base that can be accessed via the Web. Unlike conventional “FAQs,” the RightNow knowledge base makes it easy to search through hundreds of knowledge items using keyword search, plain-language queries and/or category browsing. Site visitors can quickly zero in on the specific piece of information they’re looking for. UH staff can also use the knowledge base to give fast, accurate answers over the phone or via e-mail.
We had each functional area of the university assign its own project liaison and content manager to determine how to present the knowledge base within its section of the UH Web site and how to use RightNow internally for phone and e-mail. Because the knowledge base itself would be in common, site search results would show users all relevant answers across all functional areas.
We put processes in place to ensure that our Web content was truly driven by customer needs. Often, after responding to a phone call or e-mail inquiry, staff members realized that their answer would make a valuable addition to the knowledge base. With our system, they can quickly submit their answer to an assigned knowledge base or Web site content manager. This approach, effective for building a knowledge base that is both comprehensive and highly relevant to students’ needs, also removes the burden of trying to figure out exactly what students want from content managers.
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