Playbook, university
The three things a university assistant must never try to handle
Most handovers in this network are commercial: somebody wants a person because a page did not answer them. On a university site the important ones are not commercial at all. They are a student in difficulty, an applicant whose immigration position depends on the answer, and anybody asking about their own application.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for asking for a person holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The wellbeing trigger has to fire on wording that is not a question, which is unlike every other trade here.
- Visa and immigration answers have consequences that no other kind of enrolment question does, and the correct route is a named team rather than a page.
- An enquiry about an individual application cannot be answered because the assistant cannot see the application, and confirming anything about a named applicant would be a disclosure.
- The audience includes people who are not applicants at all: parents, agents, referees and current students, each needing a different destination.
How it arrives
- i am struggling and do not know who to talk to
- will my visa be affected if i defer
- has my application been received
- why was i rejected
- can you tell me my offer conditions
- i need to speak to someone about my son's application
What has to be indexed for this to work
| A routing table of teams and what each one handles | Admissions, international, student support, accommodation, finance. Published as a page rather than living in staff knowledge, because the assistant can only route to destinations it has read. |
|---|---|
| The wellbeing route, written for out of hours as well as in hours | The institution's own chosen route for its own country, put in the refusal wording itself rather than left to be composed. |
| What applicants can see themselves | The applicant portal and what it shows, so the assistant can point somebody at their own status rather than refusing outright. |
The reply
I cannot see individual applications, so I cannot tell you where yours is. Your applicant portal shows the current status and any conditions attached to an offer. If something there is unclear or looks wrong, the admissions team can check it properly, and I can pass your details to them.
It refuses the thing it cannot do in the first sentence, then does something useful with the second by naming the place the person can actually see their own answer. The offer of a handover is last rather than first, because most people will not need it.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any wording suggesting distress, any question whose answer affects an immigration position, and any question about a named individual's application or record.
This needs a person rather than me. Leave your name and an email and I will pass it to the right team today, and if you need to speak to somebody sooner the contact details are on the page linked here.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Anything about a named applicant, including whether they have applied.
- Any statement about visa eligibility, timing or consequences.
- Reassurance to somebody in distress in place of a route to a person.
- A reason for a rejection, or a prediction about an outcome.
Questions
- Should the wellbeing route be hard coded rather than left to the material?
- Yes. It is the clearest case in this whole network for a rule rather than a retrieval result. Put the route in the refusal wording, so it appears even when nothing in the indexed material matched.
- How do we handle parents and agents?
- Route them explicitly. They are a real and substantial part of the audience, and a routing table that only names student destinations sends them to the wrong place or to nowhere.
- Does refusing this much leave the assistant with anything to do?
- It leaves it with the majority of the volume. Entry requirements, fees, visit days, accommodation, deadlines and course content are all answerable, and together they are most of what an enquiries inbox receives.
Keep reading
- Everything for a universityApplicants and enrolled students ask different things. What a university assistant can answer about entry, fees and visas, and what it must never predict.
- Handling asking for a person in generalThe design question at the centre of a support assistant. Offer early, offer once, collect what a reply needs, promise a time you can keep.
- Two university waiting lists that behave nothing like each otherA hall waiting list and a full module are two queues with two owners. What can be said about each, and what the guarantee does not cover.
- A first visit to a campus that is not in one placeWhich site, which building, the shuttle between them and what a new arrival needs on the day. All published, usually on four unlinked pages.
- Whose hours does the visitor actually mean?The library, the department office and the service desk keep three sets of hours, and every one of them changes in vacation. What to index.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.