Digital Transformation (Dx) isn’t limited to consumer industries like retail and transportation. It’s hitting campuses across the U.S. as higher education institutions offer more distant learning degrees and introduce more technology into the classrooms and offices. Higher ed IT departments have their hands full as a result.

Just ask Michael O’Leary, Manager of Client Services at Southern New Hampshire University, the nation’s third largest online university. His team has been leveraging LogMeIn Rescue since 2013 to successfully navigate Dx at SNHU. They remotely support around 174,000 distance students, faculty, staff, and alumni. That’s in addition to 8,000 on-campus users. No small feat."

The client services department must not only keep up with the university’s tremendous online growth but stay ahead of it. In large part, it is IT’s successful and scalable service and support that enables SNHU to grow as an online university.

While I won’t pretend that higher ed IT doesn’t have challenges unique to their industry, it’s interesting that SNHU is approaching support in a way that seems familiar in customer-facing commercial industries, like retail. They even call their users “customers.”

I recently spoke with O’Leary about how they are leveraging Rescue in higher ed. No matter what industry you’re in, you very well may see your own strategy and goals in what he has to say.

A Focus on Delighting Customers

“Like with any other service, you want something that's smooth, easy to use, and less of an uplift for the end user. That's the level of support Rescue lets us provide. Customers are over the moon with the remote access. They can just step back from their machine and let us fix it.”

Readiness for High Traffic Events

“The start of a new term or password resets are big events for us. With Rescue, the difference between our ability to handle a hundred people reaching out one day and 200 people reaching out the next day is just 10 to 15 seconds in terms of pickup time.”

Meeting Customer Expectations

“This generation of users don't want to get on a phone to talk to support. Take texting – you probably text a hundred times more than you call. The chat system allows us to cater to that preference. It allows us to quickly connect and start supporting.”

Support at (Super) Scale

“Five or six years ago I would venture to say that we had 10 help desk agents supporting around 60,000 users tops. Now we have 75 agents supporting over 180,000 people. Rescue has grown very well with our department in a very short amount of time. We haven't been inundated, and even if we are, we’re able to put more people on to alleviate any of those issues. Over the next three years, SNHU’s goal is double the number of learners. We need to provide the support when that growth comes in.”

Measuring Success for Customer Satisfaction

“SNHU judges success based on how the tool helps us support our end users. Our SLA for average speed to answer is 1.5 minutes, but we’re able to do it in 25-40 seconds. So those are quick answers. Another SLA is chat percentage abandoned. We set it for 15% on a daily basis and we're anywhere from 10% to 20% (it’s on that higher end during high traffic events like the start of a term). But again, these are people waiting 30 seconds, more or less, before abandoning it. So these are great, great numbers.”

In higher ed? Learn how LogMeIn Rescue can help empower your help desk to deliver amazing results for students and faculty.