Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

February 21, 2008

Datamonitor Studies CRM For Higher Education

By Tracey E. Schelmetic

TMCnet Contributor

Lest we in the call center market get smug and start to think that customer relationship management (CRM) is all about us, let's not forget that "customer" can mean a lot of things: a patient in a healthcare setting, a driver broken down at the side of the road, a business-to-business customer, a patient filling a prescription, a publication's subscriber base, etc. So it should come as no surprise that CRM is beginning to catch on outside the call center, as well. This time around, it's colleges and universities, and the "customers" are students.

Higher education institutions are turning to CRM to help differentiate themselves in an attempt to compete for desirable students. A recently released report, "CRM in the Higher Education Market" by independent market analysts Datamonitor, has predicted that IT revenue from CRM solutions in the higher education markets of the US, UK, Germany, France and Australia will grow from $184.9 million in 2007 to $324.5 million in 2012. The growth is expected to be driven both by the purchase of new solutions and the expansion of existing installations.

“CRM solutions enable colleges and universities to significantly improve the quality of their relationships with students at every point in the student lifecycle, from a prospective student applying for admission to an alumnus making a donation to the annual fund,” said Nicole Engelbert, Lead Analyst for Education Technology at Datamonitor and author of the study. “The next five years will see a dramatic increase in the number of institution-wide CRM implementations in higher education in the US and abroad.”

Colleges and universities have historically targeted CRM to support specific processes, such as campaign management, in the admissions and development offices. Fueled by developments in the consumer market, student expectations for institutional services are rising fast and prompting institutions to extend their view of CRM to include a larger and more diverse set of processes and departments.

“Institutions increasingly recognize the value of creating a 360-degree view of the student experience to their recruitment, retention and development initiatives,” said Engelbert. “By capturing data and information about each student interaction, CRM provides educators with powerful insight and tools to ensure that future interactions contribute to rather than detract from creating more positive relationships with students.”

Translating a corporate sector CRM solution into one that meets the specific needs of higher education is a more complicated task than simply changing references to customers and sales to students and admissions in the end-user interface.

The degree to which CRM vendors have successfully made these changes varies considerably and has given rise to a large and diverse competitive landscape. The current landscape, however, is likely to evolve.

Said Engelbert, “Over the short-term, there is ample room in the higher education market for a diverse set of CRM vendors. But with the increasing adoption of more sophisticated CRM strategies, enterprise-class applications with strong analytics and the ability to support the entire student lifecycle are likely to prevail as they are better suited to long-term institutional needs.”

For more information about the study, visit www.datamonitor.com.

Tracey Schelmetic is editorial director for CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions. For more articles please visit Tracey Schelmetic’s columnist page.

Related Contact Center Solutions Articles

TMCnet Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

For those of you who check the home page of the Contact Center Solutions Community on a regular basis, you know that I spent the past week in Indianapolis at Interactive Intelligence's Interactions 13 event. As a result, it is my hope that you read not only the articles that were written during the event, but also will continue to read next week about more interesting information I gleaned from the company, its resellers, customers and industry analysts. [ Read More ]
05/18/2013

Kohl's Moves Platform to Cloud with ININ's CaaS

Kohl's Department Stores just signed a multi-year deal with Interactive Intelligence to move its contact center solutions to the Interactive Intelligence Communications-as-a-Service solution. The deal will allow Kohl's to increase its level of business, meet seasonal demands, and enhance its business practices. [ Read More ]
05/17/2013

Customer Experience Research: ININ Reveals What Enquiring Minds Want to Know

As a prelude to the closing session of the Interactive Intelligence Interactions 13 event, the company's CMO Joe Staples informed me that some "interesting and surprising" research was going to be revealed. Was he ever correct! [ Read More ]
05/17/2013

The Stockade Group and the Call Center Corporation Merge to Dedicate Resources to Customer Service

The Stockade Group, a provider of telephone and Web-based client outreach services, and the Call Center Corporation, a provider of call center software and technology, have merged to combine their resources and focus on delivering quality customer service. In a time when up brands can lose up to 20 percent of revenue due to poor customer experience, this move is crucial in ensuring customer satisfaction and business success. [ Read More ]
05/17/2013

[ View all Contact Center Solutions Articles ]

Contact Center Solutions Glossary of Terms

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O

Featured Whitepaper

Microsoft® Lync® in the Contact Center: Integrating with Customer Interaction Center™ to Provide a Barrierâ€free Customer Experience To implement contact center functionality, organizations using Microsoft Lync Server 2010 can follow the unified communications blueprint of open standards interoperability and integrate to a contact center solution of their choice. Customer Interaction Center (CIC) from Interactive Intelligence is a proven best of breed contact center solution that merits consideration ...

Featured Success Story

Interactive Intelligence all-in-one IP communications software suite integrated with Microsoft Lync helps Bentley save $200,000 annually.

Featured Product Demo

Contact Center Solutions Interaction Analyzer™

Interaction Analyzer™
Real-time word and phrase spotting. Alerting. Analytics. Scoring. Coaching. Watch how Interaction Analyzer turns every moment, of every past and present call, into data that lets you deliver an exceptional customer experience.