2024-10-09 Ocelot Connect

Owned by Denise Kidd
Oct 09, 2024
3 min read

The need for unified student lifecycle engagement

What institutions need

Operational challenges

  • Lack of centralization and consistency - fragmented resources/data/processes

  • Creating efficiency through automation or connected technology - systems/services are disconnected or not integrated

Engagement platform must solve:

  • Ease the burden on students

  • Ensure consistency in student interactions

  • Proactively reach at-risk students with critical information

  • Data-driven insights to support services/information gaps/student priorities

Student Engagement Transformation Framework

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Workshop 2: Reactive to Proactive: Smart Deployment of Outreach to Ensure Student Success

Student success through two-way messaging

  • Improve student success and provide them with outcomes in a timely manner and timely actions.

  • Texting campaigns are led usually by a single or multiple depts but not coordinated across the entire campus.

  • Use engagement data to drive interactions/interventions. AI or human-backed responses. Provide connectors between Ocelot and our systems to target the right students at the right time with the right message.

  • Reduce active time needed by staff.

Case Study - UVA

  • Staff overwhelmed by inbound requests, limiting time for strategic outreach

  • Phased onboarding

    • Financial AId, Student accounts → Housing & Res Life → Advising → Student Health & Wellness

  • Planning

    • Use a communications calendar to coordinate for proactive outreach

    • Texting as a nudge - for complex topics

    • Cohort focus - prioritize smaller groups with most immediate needs

  • Key Use Cases

    • High-risk cohorts (students with past due balance, former students entering into collections, degree candidates with a balance)

    • Financial Aid scenarios

    • Collaboration with advancement on scholarship information

  • Best practices and tips

    • Text: familiar, controlled tone and student-centric engagement

    • Text Campaigns: Invitation to engage instead of task to complete

    • Sensitivity of Timing: Do not send during finals/study period, make sure you have staffing available when messaging as sent (late morning, early afternoon)

  • Building relationships for university-wide engagement

    • Establish a central vision

    • Tackle common use cases

    • Scale through trusted partnerships, commitment to shared ownership

  • Addressing key challenges with Ocelot

    • increase in interaction

    • AI-powered efficiency

    • Enhanced experiences for staff and students

    • Optimized staff time

    • Access to information 24/7

  • Future focus

    • Connected campus - implement Salesforce integration for seamless staff experience

    • Unified contact centers: create a single pane of glass/agent interface for streamlined communications

    • Enhancing support: expanding to live assistant following operational improvements

Key learnings and actionable strategies

  • Plan campaigns for a specific student group. Invite students to engage, be strategice about the student list.

  • Connect with colleagues to share your experience

  • Design your two-way messaging strategy to ensure timely responses from your team

  • Understand how your outreach relates to the broader student communication plan. Connect with your marketing/leadership team

Q&A

How many do you have monitoring campaigns? 3-4 on the day of launch, 1-2 check in periodically in the week after

Do you all use Ocelot's chatbot or live chat (instant messaging) features as well? If so, how do you find the texting function compares in terms of efficacy with "reaching students where they're at?"

How has the email/phone traffic been affected? 7-8% decrease in email contacts.

How are you ensuring that students read texts and don’t disregard them? Students have not indicated that they don’t like being contacted via text due to the high level of engagement.

Can students opt out? Students can opt out.

Unveiling the next generation of Ocelot One: Student Engagement As Pathway To Student Success

Engagement as the pathway to success

  • Digital transformation partnership

  • Indicate leading and lagging indicators of student success

  • Connected campus with multiple organizational layers of action map

Ocelot One demo

Engage

  • Heatmap of engagement across campus by department

Succeed

  • Financial aid literacy and certification

  • Will add more compliance products

Retain

  • Students' risk scores

  • Lagging indicators: based on academic performance (missing classes, late assignments, lower grades)

  • Combined with demo data to target interventions.

  • Leading indicators: engagement

    • Engaged students are successful students.

Top takeaways

  • Where are you on the Transformation Framework

  • Power of collegiality in driving student success

  • Get to know your students via insights

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