BPO
Handling the admissions and clearing contact surge
A Scottish university was overwhelmed during clearing. An outsourced admissions team absorbed the surge and cut abandoned calls without adding permanent headcount.
Results at a glance
- -79%
- Abandoned calls
- 3.6x
- Peak calls handled per day
- +41 pts
- Web chat answered in target
- -46%
- Cost vs permanent hires
clearing period
vs in-house
The challenge
For most of the year the university's admissions team managed enquiries comfortably. During the clearing period the volume of calls, emails and web chats jumped several times over in a matter of days, and applicants making fast decisions could not get through.
Every missed call during clearing was a place that might go unfilled, so the stakes were high and the window was short. Hiring and training permanent staff for a few intense weeks was not practical, and offer information had to be accurate under real pressure.
Pain points
- Contact volume multiplied within days at the start of clearing and outran the permanent team
- Abandoned calls during clearing meant applicants went elsewhere and places went unfilled
- Web chat and email were left unanswered while agents cleared the phone queue
- Temporary staff hired each year needed course and offer training from scratch
Our approach
- Built a trained overflow team that scaled up for clearing and stood down afterwards, so the university paid for capacity only when it needed it
- Handled phone, email and web chat from one team with a shared knowledge base of courses and offer conditions
- Ran a pre-clearing readiness drill so agents knew the course catalogue and escalation paths before the surge
- Data handled under UK GDPR with a Data Processing Agreement covering applicant records
Results at a glance
The results
- The team absorbed the clearing surge and abandoned calls fell to a fraction of the previous year.
- Email and web chat were answered within target alongside the phone queue.
- The university added surge capacity without carrying permanent headcount through the quiet months.
Clearing used to break our phone lines. This year applicants got straight through and we filled places we would have lost.
Common questions
Yes. The overflow team scales for the clearing period and stands down afterwards, so the university pays for surge capacity only when it is needed.
These are representative engagements. Client identities are anonymised and the metrics are illustrative of the type of results this work delivers, not audited figures for a named client.
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