Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

Students as customers is the new meme in higher education these days, and keeping students enrolled is one of the top challenges of higher education. Hobsons, a company that describes its services as helping colleges and universities “elevate their enrollment strategies,” has developed what it calls “a comprehensive product designed to identify, engage, assess, and coach students through to graduation.”

 

Not much different from holding a customer’s hand through the sales cycle, is it?

 

The company has launched Hobsons Student Retention Solutions, a group of services that not only provide a software system (EMT Retain) to help with the technical management of student retention, but also “a complete advising package that guides schools through their entire retention program.”

 

Hobsons Student Retention Solutions provides a customizable suite of services for institutional use, “regardless of the phase the institution’s retention efforts are in,” company officials say: “The product includes retention assessments, predictive modeling, personality testing and change management, technology, and achievement coaching.”

 

Retention Assessments provide an evaluation of current retention efforts. Predictive Modeling provides a model that uses historical data to predict behavior, thus providing the ability to target efforts, and Achievement Coaching provides one-on-one coaching for high-risk students.

 

At the heart of the product is EMT Retain, a Web-based Communication and eCoaching system that optimizes campus communication to target at-risk students. “With one-third of students enrolled in higher education dropping out of college each year, there’s no question student retention is a real problem facing higher ed,” said Craig Heldman, president of Hobsons U.S.

 

Exacerbating the problem is the fact that only about half of schools have identified an individual or department to address retention issues, Hobsons officials say, and slightly fewer than half of schools have established goals to improve student retention.

 

Higher education is becoming quite the market for CRM products. This summer, when Jenzabar, a vendor of CRM and other software and services for higher education, held a conference, the company said the client conference was “the largest event in Jenzabar history.”

 

JAM 2007 hosted more than 1,300 attendees, including Jenzabar users, client executives, industry partners, Jenzabar client services and technical staff, and thought leaders within higher education. The theme of the event was “Building Stronger Communities,” and numerous sessions focused on how Jenzabar’s product, constituent relationship modules (Jenzabar CRMs), and learning management system can be used.

 

Representatives from public, private, two-year, four-year and specialty schools came to the conference, which featured more than 325 user information sessions covering the entire range of Jenzabar’s product and service offerings.

 

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