Southern New Hampshire University

As the largest provider of nonprofit higher education in the country, Southern New Hampshire University has their work cut out for them. They need to support more than 240,000 users, including 130,000 online students, 3,000 on-campus students, 4,000 on-campus faculty and staff, 6,000 remote faculty and staff, and 100,000 alumni. And they need to do it all while meeting the internal business units’ very high expectations for user satisfaction and customer experience.

As the front line for all technical support, the Client Services team needs to manage an unpredictable volume of requests. They may receive 100 requests one day and 200 the next, especially during key events like the start of a new term. And they need to do it in a way that meets the needs of an increasingly modern user base. For example, SNHU employees and students don’t want to pick up the phone when they need IT help. They expect technical support to be just as quick as other communications they’re accustomed to, like texting, adding another layer of expectations to meet.

Rescue enables SNHU’s Client Services to provide a positive experience for both customers and agents. Connection to technical support is frictionless, leading customers to solutions faster - even during the busiest times of the school year. They offer general help desk assistance for website users and a deeper level of support for more intricate issues through a Rescue calling card available on all SNHU endpoints. On the agent side, contextual information offers insight into what issues to expect before the session starts, saving both time and effort. They can seamlessly take control of the user’s device, send files and documents, and even fix hardware issues through Rescue Lens video support.

While the agent solves the issue, the user can simply sit back. “Like with any other service, you want something that's smooth, easy to use, and less of an uplift for the end user,” says O'Leary. “That's the level of support Rescue lets us provide.”

SNHU has leveraged Rescue as their singular support solution since 2013 due to the high quality of service it enables and its ability to easily scale with the university. SNHU’s business units judge Client Services by how well they support end users, and they are consistently pleased with the results, including:

• Decreased average speed to answer from the business unit’s requested SLA of 1.5 minutes to just 25-40 seconds
• The ability to handle peak volume events with just 10-15 seconds difference in pickup time
• Meeting the chat abandonment SLA of 15% (users who abandon their request for support while waiting just 30 seconds on average)
• Average handle time of 16 minutes, with 15 minutes 30 seconds of that time actively working on the issue
• The ability to grow with SNHU in a short amount of time, from 10 agents supporting 50,000 users to 75 agents supporting more than 100,000 users
• Integration with ServiceNow to make each workflow – from ticket creation in ServiceNow to remote support session in Rescue - as seamless and time efficient as possible

Rescue has given SNHU the confidence to grow the university’s online student base by providing a reliable support solution that scales easily and creates a positive customer experience.