For Georgian College in Ontario, Canada, delivering an ‘unrivalled student experience’ is its north star.
Georgian is a multi-campus college headquartered in Barrie, north of Toronto. Georgian is Canada’s first designated changemaker college by Ashoka U for its role in social innovation and changemaking in higher education.
The experiential learning activities also closely align to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. As a result, enrolment at Georgian is in demand—both in Canada and internationally—with nearly half of its 12,500 full-time students representing over 86 countries.
Georgian’s emphasis on the quality of the student experience results in some of the best learning-for-life outcomes in Canada, with more than 90% of graduates finding work within six months of graduation.
Exploring every touchpoint
“Focusing on the student experience is a strategy, a mindset, and our culture,” explains John Barbato, Georgian’s Executive Director for Innovation and Digital Experience. “It’s a commitment to explore every touchpoint with our students to ensure that we’re providing a truly differentiated experience.”
“The profile, needs and circumstances of students are constantly evolving, so our goal is to constantly evolve the way we meet them on their journey.”
Georgian’s dedication to delivering a high quality, personalised student experience has proved especially valuable in recent years. Higher education institutions worldwide have faced recruitment challenges caused by COVID restrictions, while the Canadian Government recently announced a reduction in study permits issued to international students.
With employees and students working in seven different campus locations, multiple disconnected service systems had been acquired over the years and were difficult to integrate. The college wanted to move to a single, standardised technology platform to deliver an easy-to-access, streamlined, and consistent support and service experience. They also wanted to unlock cost savings and efficiencies. Partnering with Deloitte for help, Georgian selected ServiceNow.
“Many of our student services are centralised, so someone seeking support in one of our more remote community campuses could receive a different level of service,” says John. “Our systems were siloed, so information about individual interactions with students couldn’t be shared easily, creating frustrations for students and employees alike.
“We want to wrap our arms around our students, to connect them with the right people, and to ensure timely, accurate and consistent responses.
“We selected ServiceNow because it allows us to integrate and harmonise all of our services, across all of our campuses, on a single platform, accessible to all via a user-friendly portal, 24/7.”
Human-centred design approach
The design of the solution, featuring IT Service Management (ITSM), Customer Service Management (CSM), and Automation Engine, began with extensive student interviews. The goal was to capture each service touchpoint and identify every opportunity to personalise the experience and provide a wide range of self-service capabilities.
“The collaboration with ServiceNow and Deloitte was exceptional. We all remained focused on our North Star vision of the unrivalled student experience and challenged each other to drive the best possible outcomes,” says John. “The human-centred design approach to the design, development and implementation of the platform allowed us to pause and re-engage our students, showing them prototypes, getting their feedback and iterating along the way.”
The process revealed insights into how students search for information, for example, about their fees, enabling ServiceNow to build functionality that made it easy for them to find the financial information they were looking for.
Striving for excellence resulted in the decision to integrate ITSM and CSM knowledge, cases and interactions in one student portal to deliver a seamless, consistent experience. “Whatever their needs, it was essential that students should never have to leave the portal; otherwise, it would not be an unrivalled experience,” says John.
“It was challenging technically, but now the integration means that everyone is working collaboratively in one place, on the students’ behalf. There is now a consolidated dashboard of student information, which includes data around cases and interactions.
“The expertise that ServiceNow brought in the customer service space was new to us. It’s helped move us forward as an organisation, not just with the platform but with our governance around service, the setting of service level expectations, and our maturity around treating the student like we would treat a valued customer.”
Serving the students where they are
Students can now connect to 95% of student services through ServiceNow, including IT, registration, finance and housing, with information, knowledge articles and other services accessible via the portal and mobile devices.
“In the first year, there were approximately 60,000 views by students of almost 500 knowledge articles on diverse topics, from mental health and well-being, campus safety and security, parking, IT and registration,” says John. “Self-service like this eliminates the need to seek in-person support and it’s faster and more efficient for everyone.”
The college registrar’s office reports an approximate 20% year-over-year reduction in emails, phone calls and walk-ups, with an average general email response time reduced from five days to less than one during their highest volume periods. This reduction in transactional tasks frees up employees to spend more quality time with students.
Instantly updating student records
Also contributing to today’s seamless student experience is Georgian’s use of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) components within Automation Engine. “We explored the role of RPA to help remove bottlenecks, improve workflow efficiency and enhance services,” says John.
“It took just seven months to get started on ITSM and eight months to be up and running on CSM; we’ve already used our first robot to replace a paper-based system with an automated workflow that instantly updates a student’s grades in the student management system with a single keystroke. Previously, this simple task might have taken weeks, leaving the student unable to progress to the next stage of their studies.”
Another important development is the creation in ServiceNow of a single, live dashboard on every student, providing employees with a summary of a student’s history at the college. “This amalgamates up to 12 screens within our student management system into just one,” explains John. “Previously, the student might have to talk to numerous people to access information or resolve an issue. Now, we have their full history on the live dashboard and can see immediately, with confidence, what the cause of the issue might be and how to solve it, at that first touchpoint. That’s what an unrivalled experience should be like.”
Thanks to CSM, employees have reported time savings as they no longer need to access multiple systems to provide service and support to students; they can now access a consolidated view of the student and the services they have interacted with across the college.
The student experience has also been enhanced by the creation in ServiceNow of a digitised walk-up service, delivering a consistent experience across multiple college campus locations.
Support for employees and faculty
The college’s 3,000 employees and faculty can also use the ServiceNow portal to request support for their IT needs, such as keeping laptops, mobile devices and other tools maintained, updated, and working efficiently.
Next, Georgian plans to deploy Employee Center Professional, bringing together all services for employees and faculty, mirroring the quality of the student experience: “Employees will be able to use the power of ServiceNow to collaborate with colleagues, search knowledge articles and submit tickets,” explains John, “while we can curate personalised content for different employee groups.”
Improved student retention rates
Evidence of students’ appreciation for their experience at Georgian is provided in many formats, including not only the feedback forms that are submitted in ServiceNow but also in retention statistics.
“Our strategy to provide seamless, connected services was to enable students to focus on their learning and their Georgian experience,” explains John. “Our use of ServiceNow has contributed to strong results, including a 7% improvement in our annual domestic retention rate. And as our retention rate improves, there’s a corresponding reduction in recruitment time and cost.
“There are long-term benefits of improved retention. We want to create lifelong connections with our learners and encourage our graduates to come back to participate in changemaking. Our roadmap with ServiceNow includes using the platform to create great experiences for both alumni and community partners, and to share their lifelong learning experiences with our current students.
“While ServiceNow and Deloitte have set us up for success and allowed us to pick up speed, they’re always there with individualised support to maximise the value of the platform. It’s a true partnership—they’re as committed to our success as we are.”