La Trobe University makes connecting a priority with Optus

With more than 37,000 students and 3,000 staff members, plus six metro and regional campuses across Victoria and one in New South Wales, keeping their community, students and staff connected is vital to La Trobe University (LTU). 

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 – and the resultant shift to remote teaching, learning, and workingraised many questions.  This highlighted the challenges of their existing contact centre solution, which was fast reaching end of life. 

In the spring of 2020, La Trobe went to market looking for a new contact centre solution that could address their immediate needs and evolve over time. They wanted a future-proof solution that was flexible, provided extensive reporting options and allowed users to engage via their channel of choice; be that voice, email, chat, social, outbound or SMS. 

In the highly competitive higher education market, La Trobe also recognised that delivering an outstanding digital experience to students and other stakeholders could be a winning move. As the university says: "Everything we do is grounded in a shared commitment to ensuring students have a positive and rewarding experience at La Trobe."

Following an extensive tender process and the selection of Optus and Nice CXone as their chosen partners, today La Trobe does indeed have a contact centre solution that ticks off all the key items on their wish list. 

The Optus Call Centre (OCC) powered by NICE CXone’s award winning digital interaction platform – widely recognised as a leading cloud contact centre platform. 

La Trobe was looking to enable their contact centres “to deliver integrated and frictionless omnichannel experiences that leverage customer data providing contextualised within the moment.” And the Optus Contact Centre is an integrated solution that brings together omnichannel communications, customer interaction automation, analytics and Artificial Intelligence to do exactly that. 

The solution is designed to integrate seamlessly with all major Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and back-office systems as a standard feature and can be embedded inside the university’s own CRM environment. Enabling single sign-on and a connected system of record and system of engagement. 

Users can now enjoy a connected journey across a range of interaction channels in real time: inbound, outbound, voice, chat, social media, email and CRM platforms. 

Being truly cloud-based, all an agent needs to connect is a PC or laptop, access to the Internet and either a dialable number or softphone, which means they can work through any channel regardless of location. As a result, La Trobe now has the option of basing agents or call centres in regional communities, driving down the cost to serve whilst supporting local communities and local jobs and supporting their “One University” ethos.

OCC quickly scales with demand allowing the university to easily handle seasonal variability or major incidents. With this true SaaS solution, La Trobe also only pays for functionality that they use each month.  

Key benefits of the solution for La Trobe University included: 

• Highly scalable cloud-based platform that integrates easily with La Trobe’s own platforms
• Improved user service and improved consistency of CX, with users able to engage regardless of their channel choice, location and time
• Reduced cost to serve
• Continuous performance improvements with KPI-rich reports and dashboards
• Extensive range of self-service and support capabilities via Optus Enterprise
• Opens new ways of working, including work from home
  

By partnering with Optus, La Trobe University can now be confident in their ability to support existing and prospective students and staff in a flexible, scalable, and cost-efficient manner to deliver a superior user experience.

Hear more from La Trobe on their CX transformation in the video below.

Learn more about La Trobe’s full digital transformation story here.

If you want to discuss how Optus can help you with innovative Contact Centre solutions, contact your Optus Account Manager or call the Optus Enterprise hotline on 1800 555 937.