Three universities sign with Sunrise Software in bid to provide leading edge support services to attract students

Student service availability and social media support key to new business wins and highlights increased focus on customer service as universities compete for paying students

Service Management Software company, Sunrise Software, today announced that three leading UK universities have selected its Service Desk platform, Sostenuto, in recent months. Plymouth University, York St John University and one other are all implementing Sunrise’s Service Desk platform across departments including IT, libraries and estate management, with extended deployments planned in areas including social media support.

“Increasingly, universities are thinking and behaving as service oriented businesses as they need to compete and attract fee paying students to their campuses,” says Geoff Rees, Sales Director at Sunrise Software. “Whilst initial deployments underpin the needs of IT, libraries and estate management, utilising the ‘platform’ capability of the software means that the universities can, and are, extending their student service offering across many of the university faculties – from registration management to catering, accommodation, resource management, health & safety and more.”

Developed using the latest HTML 5 technology, the software’s attractive and easy-to-use interface, combined with its’ ability to work on  multiple  devices, are two of the key attractions for universities  that seek the latest in contemporary systems to demonstrate the commitment to student services. In addition, Sunrise’s capability for social media interaction will enable universities to provide support via channels such as Twitter and Facebook, which are rapidly becoming the communication channel of choice for students.

“For many students Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have replaced more traditional methods of communication such as email and telephone.” Says Geoff Rees, “our platform, Sostenuto, allows universities to embrace this shift in the use of technology, extending the Service Desk to achieve greater reach and adoption of services. For example, on average students have four different devices with which they may connect to the network. They expect to be able to ask for support from any of those devices and Service Desks need to be able to provide it.”

Sunrise allows Service Desks to proactively listen to social media channels, such as Twitter, for comments based on #hashtags, keywords, phrases or public messages sent from, or between specific users. Such automated searches provide important early warnings of potential customer service issues, even before they are communicated formally to the Service Desk.

At any point in the processing of a Service Request or Incident, the Service Desk can automatically send messages via their favoured social media channels informing the customer of progress so far. Service teams can then proactively broadcast the status of specific identified problems via social media channels.

Sunrise is in discussion with a number of other universities that are seeking to raise their standards of student support and join up their support and communication processes.