University of Waikato: Student Support Services, Service Model Design

The University of Waikato, Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato, is committed to creating an inclusive, empowering and student-centred experience that supports students from enrolment through to graduation.

 Support services play a critical role in that experience. Across academic, wellbeing, financial, cultural and administrative domains, support services are often the difference between a student who feels held by the institution and one who falls through the cracks.

 As the University looked ahead, there was an opportunity to step back, understand how students actually experience support, and use that understanding to inform how those services could be designed and delivered going forward.

The University wanted to build a Customer Experience Framework that would guide the future design of support services for students.The intent was not to make assumptions about where things were working or not,but to ground future decisions in the lived experience of students and the operational realities of those delivering support.

The objective was to develop a shared understanding of:

●       How students experience support services across the student lifecycle

●       The emotional and functional needs that drive students to seek support, and what they need from it

●       Where current support services connect well, and where friction, duplication or gaps exist

●       What service delivery models the University could adopt to deliver more seamless, equitable and empowering support.

Purple Shirt partnered with the University to deliver aphased, human centred design programme of work focused on support services.

The work began with a domain analysis phase, drawing on existing research, stakeholder interviews and conversations with the teams delivering support across the University. This established a shared view of the current state and surfaced early hypotheses about where the support experience could be strengthened.

We then moved into customer research with students themselves, exploring how and when they seek support, what works for them, and where the system lets them down. This included one on one interviews and co-design workshops that brought students together to share, compare and build on each other's experiences.

Insights from the research were synthesised into a CustomerExperience Framework that included a lifecycle view of when and why studentsneed support, a segmentation model, and an interaction typology.

From this foundation, we worked with the University to identify, explore and assess a range of potential service delivery models. Each model was tested against the needs surfaced in the research, the operational realities of the institution, and the strategic direction the University wanted to head. This gave the University a clear view of the trade offs involved in each model and the shifts required to bring them to life.

Alongside the service models, we identified opportunity areas, underlying technology enablers, and a prioritisation framework to helpthe University decide where to focus its effort first.

The result was a clear, evidence-based picture of what students need from support services to be successful, paired with a set of service delivery model options the University can now assess and operationalise.

●       A deep, evidence-based understanding of what students need from support services to be successful

●       A Customer Experience Framework that links student support needs to institutional services and surfaces the shifts required todeliver a more seamless experience

●       A set of potential service delivery models for the University to assess and operationalise

●       Service and digital experience principles to inform the future design of support services across the institution.