OneStop

Service design

Problem

OneStop Enrollment Services is the Financial Aid Office, University Registrar, and Student Financial Services all under one roof. They handle some of the most complex university operations. They also run a call center and customer service desk that services 50,000+ students. When they approached us their website hadn’t been updated in 7 years.

Solution

The content needed to be completely restructured. This was a website that students went to for answers to hard questions about their classes, financial aid, and tuition payments. But students don’t care about the division of labor among the departments. The goal was to create a seamless customer journey. One that enabled students to find solutions, if possible, without contacting the OneStop call center. Inspired by websites like gov.uk, I decided that a self-service website was the best approach.  

Process

The content only needed to explain processes from the student’s perspective. Before we could map that out, we needed to understand the behind the scenes. So I created a service blueprint, a visual representation of operations – from enrolling in classes, to applying and confirming financial aid, to paying tuition and fees. I worked closely with call center staff and heads of departments to document the inner workings of OneStop.

Results

The service blueprint dictated exactly where the choke points were. These were the times when Financial Aid would be processing documents and students would go weeks without critical updates. Addressing why these delays occurred and how students could be proactive without holding up OneStop phone lines was the key. In the end, we saw a distinct change in behavior flow on Google Analytics. The Contact page moved from the no. 2 most visited page to no. 4. Also the Financial Aid section of the website (where students could find answers on their own) had a significant boost in traffic (21.83% of total traffic in 2018 to 24.26% in 2021).