INTRODUCTION
After the Microcredentials were introduced in Dec 2019, they really took off during the first lockdown. Coupled with the general increase in demand for online learning, we were letting down Microcredential learners as they were falling through the cracks.
Because of Covid-19 and lockdowns, our partners (who are providing educators and project leads for those microcredentials), struggled to keep up with demand on both ends (their own brick-and-mortar students and online learners via FutureLearn) and there was no time to set up proper workflows after the first, trial run of Microcredentials.
Situation
a) Supporting Microcredential Learners
Support agents would miss tickets from MC learners because they'd go in the main queue (and from April to July there were on average 400 new tickets every day). Some of them were time-sensitive and learners would be upset as the cost of the product is quite high, carries academic credits and they expected a much better service.
b) Creating workflows and processes among the stakeholders
The support process required involvement of multiple stakeholders and communication between support team, partnership managers and project leads (on Partner side).
Whenever a learner requested a deferral or extension or a withdrawal, we needed to seek approval from the project lead (partner) and sometimes other parties (partnership managers, educators), which meant emailing them directly so the whole conversation would be hosted in private inboxes, and often included lots of email chains with CC-ng and BCC-ng which created a lot of 'inbox noise' (or people clicking Reply instead of Reply to all and the information wouldn't reach the right person.
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Mary - NHS Doctor
Mary works as a GP for an NHS surgery. In late 2019, she decided to enrol on a FutureLearn Microcredential to upskill.
A month after the course has started, Covid-19 pandemic struck and Mary's plans were disrupted due to her being a key worker.
Time is of the essence for her and she requires quick support and accommodation from course managers due to extenuating circumstances.
Task
Create a workflow between stakeholders, improve the speed of customer support and set up a process for deferral and refund requests
Action
(a) set up a dedicated inbox account which will automatically flag tickets from microcredential learners as Urgent
(a) create an onboarding guide for learners; how to navigate the course and how and where to request assistance (which was added to the step 1 of the course)
(b) create a collaborative spreadsheet for requesting and tracking deferral and refund requests
(b) create an onboarding manual for partners
Deferral requests tab
Refund and withdrawals tab
Result
Microcredential tickets were easier to identify and learners would receive a support much faster. Also, by setting up the special email address/inbox, all stakeholders could direct communication there. Since emails to that address went directly into Zendesk, anyone on the support team was able to pick it up.
