University of Bristol is one of the top universities in the UK, servicing over 20,000 students and almost 8,000 staff across 6 faculties and 25 different academic schools. With a major focus on ambition and innovation, University of Bristol leverage technology in many facets of their operations, leading to an incredibly complex communications ecosystem.
Kevin Thomas, Unified Communications Manager for the University of Bristol, shared how IR have helped simplify that complexity to deliver a better experience for all their end users.
The problem
UC environments in modern universities are incredibly complicated, and there is a high expectation from users to deliver a seamless experience. University of Bristol is no exception.
Their communication ecosystem covers everything from voice, video and collaboration platforms, to contact centres (some 17 of them), to mobile device support, mass texting, information management and more.
Using in-built tools gave them limited insight into performance metrics for some elements of their environment. But IT perception doesn’t always equate to a positive customer experience.
With such extensive requirements, they had difficulty understanding the true quality of user experience across all their different locations, platforms, and environment components.
The solution and benefits
University of Bristol have been an IR customer since 2017, using the Skype for Business and Path Insight solutions to monitor and optimise their UC ecosystem.
Real-time visibility and monitoring across their multi-vendor, multi-location ecosystem has helped Kevin’s team take a more proactive approach to managing their environment.
“IR gave us a fuller picture of our environment and how end users were experiencing it. It can say this is good, there is a problem over here, something could go wrong over there.”
The ability to see customer queries and drill down to discover firsthand what the problem is, where it’s occurring and how to fix it allows for faster, more accurate problem resolution.
IR’s solutions have also provided Kevin’s team with insight at all levels of operations, allowing front line technicians to deep dive into immediate problems, while others can focus on analysing data over time to understand evolving requirement and solve ongoing issues.
Kevin highlighted that the real value they gain from IR’s solutions lies in their ability to compile data from multiple sources in one place, and easily access that data to uncover intelligent insight.
“The ease at which you can get accurate information is hugely valuable. Drill down capabilities, network assessments, data mining – combining all this together in a single pane of glass and you start gaining the insights into customer experience that you’ve always dreamed of.”
Ultimately, IR’s solutions have provided the University of Bristol a better understanding of what “good” actually looks like for both IT teams and the end user.
Kevin said, “We have confidence that we can deliver a higher standard with this tool; I wouldn’t want to be without it now.”
Kevin Thomas
Unified Communications Manager, University of Bristol
