|
Quick Stats
- Monthly chat sessions
average over 500
student attendees
- During an average 2
hour session, over 1000
questions are moderated
- During an average
session, an average of
500 questions are
answered
- Enrollment:
7,803 undergrad;
4,819 graduate &
professional
- 4,000 faculty and staff
- According to the U.S.
And News and World
Report, Tulane
University is ranked 51st
among the best national
universities
- Mission: “Tulane's
purpose is to create,
communicate and
conserve knowledge in
order to enrich the
capacity of individuals,
organizations and
communities to think, to
learn and to act and lead
with integrity and
wisdom.”
“Using
SparcPlug's
moderated
chat service,
Tulane is able
to efficiently
and personally
reach out to
very large
groups of
students and
parents.”
- Jeffrey G Schiffman
Assoc. Director of Admission
Tulane University
|
|
|
|
 |
Tulane University Case Study.
(To download this case study as a pdf, please click here)
|
Challenge
Tulane University Admissions Department staff prides itself in its
ability to answer prospective and newly admitted students' questions in
a personalized and timely manner. Tulane has determined this highly
attentive level of outreach motivates students to apply and increases the
yield rate of admitted students. One of the admissions department's
biggest challenges was efficiently utilizing staff members' time. Staff
members found themselves repeatedly answering the same questions
from prospective and newly admitted students/parents and needed to
find a way to streamline their efforts. Tulane needed an easy-to-use,
powerful online recruiting tool that would help to both alleviate the
repetitious inquiries and make better use of staff time -- while
maintaining the goal of connecting with students and parents on a very
personal level. The admissions department required an online tool they
could configure and set up themselves, without assistance from their
internal IT department or Webmasters, but that had built-in support
staff behind it, ready to jump in and assist at any time.
Solution
Tulane partnered with SparcPlug, Inc., selecting its
moderated chat solution. With it, Tulane is able to:
- Host large, well-attended moderated chat events - including multiple
moderators and any number of panelists (admissions staff
members, current students, etc.)
- Familiarize large groups of prospective students to their school and
motivate them to apply and enroll
- Provide immediate answers to questions - that get shared among
100s/1000s of students and parents in real-time
- Work in an online medium (chat/real-time social networking) that
students are already comfortable with and prefer
- Push out web links, web pages, slides, share files and show YouTube
videos as part of a chat session
- Collect searchable chat session transcripts - made available to
students unable to attend the chat and that can serve as FAQs
- Continually gather feedback from each chat session to use for
existing outreach programs or use to create new strategies.
SparcPlug makes the entire chat event process 100% hassle-free for
Tulane - handling the chat event hosting, branding, panelist
photo page layouts, event web page hosting and support. Tulane simply
schedules its chat events, e-mails prospective students to join and then
logs in to chat at the appointed time. To boost and maximize
attendance to Tulane's chat events, SparcPlug offers linking to popular
social networks like Facebook and Twitter so chat audience members
can easily share with their friends. SparcPlug also sends event
reminders via text messages, phone calls and e-mails, as well as
offering the export-to-calendar functionality that lets audience
members book Tulane's chats into many popular online calendars.
Results
Some of the positive results Tulane has achieved include:
- More efficient use of admissions staff members' time
- Discovering new ways to make contact with students in ways that are
more meaningful and preferred by them
- An increase in applicants
- Higher yield rate of admitted students
- Questions being asked individually are more specific, allowing for
better tailoring of answers
- Positive feedback from prospective students and parents
- In addition to admissions staff chats, Tulane uses the moderated chat
tool to allow prospective students and parents to chat with myriad
panelists: Tulane's president, current students, housing or
financial aid staff, faculty members and sports department members
- Incorporation of chat events into year-round communications with
enrolled students provides them continuity and a sense of their place
in the community throughout a student's life-cycle at Tulane.
|
 |
|
Access2Experts is a service of SparcPlug, Inc. providers of daze-free technology
SparcPlug's chat services:
Chat Auditorium |
Xronos |
Admissions-Chat |
College-Chats |
UniversityChats |
CEO-Chats |
Access2Experts
Copyright © 2018 SparcPlug, Inc.
|
|
|