Volume 3. No 2
Information Technology News of the University of California, Davis Winter 1995
Information Technology News of the University of California, Davis Winter 1995
Budget cuts. Staff cuts. More to do and fewer people to do it. And hordes of new students arriving on campus every year.
That was the situation facing Communications Resources in the fall of 1992.
Responsible for signing up some 1,600 students for telephone service and no longer able to afford the additional employees needed to sit at four different dorm locations having students complete a three-part contract, Student Services Coordinator Donna Carrasco called on voice mail for help.
Now when new students arrive at the dorm, they plug in a telephone and are prompted through simple directions to complete the telephone sign-up. After the order is processed, the student receives a written confirmation in the mail. As a result, instead of needing 12 to 15 extra employees in the fall, Student Services processes all of the sign-ups during the first month of school with one person working overtime to type the information on a computerized form.
The new system has streamlined billing and eliminated the need for the paper contract used in the past. And instead of waiting in long lines, students have a month to sign up at their own convenience in the evening and on the weekends when they won't overburden the campus voice mail system.
Carrasco still gets just as many calls--during the first week of school it's not unusual for the system to record 500 attempts to reach her voice mailbox--but because she tailors her outgoing messages to answer questions, not many of the calls require a callback.
"We've had absolutely no complaints from students on the voice mail system because they've grown up with it," says Carrasco. "They much prefer it to long lines."
For those who object to technology supplanting contact between live human beings, Zack O'Donnell, Customer Service Center Manager for Communications Resources, has a suggestion--just try it.
A historical perspective also helps, adds O'Donnell. Think back just six years ago when the campus telephone system consisted of six-button phones shared by everyone in a department.
"People have forgotten what it was like. On busy days all the lines would be tied up and you couldn't get a dial tone."
Voice mail users may suffer from a similar kind of selective amnesia, says O'Donnell. "People who have voice mail may have already forgotten what it was like always having a stack of messages to return and constantly playing telephone tag."
To date about 2,300 individual faculty and staff members have signed up for voice mail, and the number continues to climb. In December university offices in Research Park were upgraded with a new, independent voice mail system that will bring voice mail services at that location up to speed with the rest of the campus.
A number of other departments on campus are also using voice mail for routing calls. At the campus employment office, for example, an automated voice mail attendant handles the job line.
Coming soon is a new voice mail feature--the ability to store FAX messages in voice mailboxes to be printed out at a time and location convenient to the recipient. The FAX feature can also be added to voice mail automated attendants so that a caller can ask for information to be sent automatically, eliminating the need for staff to send the FAX by hand.
The campus has a collective incentive to encourage faculty, staff and departments to open voice mail accounts in that upgrades are entirely funded by voice mail fees--the more accounts, the more upgrades. For information on voice mail, talk to your department Area Telephone Representative or call Communications Resources at 752-4603.
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