Solving top customer service challenges in higher education

In higher education, the quality of student-facing customer service isn’t just about satisfaction scores. It impacts retention, reputation, and even institutional revenue. Yet across campuses, support services remain riddled with friction. While some institutions are moving fast to modernize, many struggle to meet rising student expectations and needs. Here are five of the most pressing customer service challenges, and how some schools are tackling them.

• Fragmented service delivery across departments

One of the most common frustrations students face is being bounced between departments that don’t talk to each other. Financial aid, registrar, student accounts, and advising often operate on separate platforms and policies, forcing students to repeat themselves at every touchpoint.

Union College addressed this by creating a One Stop office that centralizes multiple services. As Robert Deverona, Director of One Stop and Advising Career and Transfer, puts it: “Our One Stop office is our department where students come in for anything… advising, registration, bill payment, and financial aid.” The aim is a seamless experience where students don’t have to guess which door to knock on.

• Long wait times and outdated queuing systems

Wait times are a persistent pain point, especially during peak periods like the start of term. At the University at Buffalo, students were waiting up to four hours to get a UBCard before they adopted a smarter system.

“Historically, UBCard had long wait times, with lines wrapping around the building,” said Jennifer Vick, Director of One Capen and One Diefendorf. “Since implementing WaitWell… we’ve been able to offer a QR code check-in, allowing students to leave the physical line and receive text updates. This improved the student experience and created a much calmer atmosphere for our staff.”

UB now averages just five minutes of wait time across its two high-traffic service centres since implementing WaitWell.

• Lack of operational data to guide improvements

Many service teams don’t have visibility into how students move through their systems or where bottlenecks occur. Without data, it’s difficult to make informed changes or justify new resources.

UB solved this by making data a core part of their workflow. “From a student experience perspective, having data and a ticket history for the staff to work off of helps us tremendously,” said Vick. “Running reports that quantitatively show which services are utilized most allows both one-stop staff and stakeholder customer service staff to view completed tickets, improving communication with the campus community.”

At UT Austin, the shift to decision-making was also crucial. “The number one benefit for me that has helped us a lot is the plethora of reports available to us,” Jessica Rodriguez, Associate Director at the Texas OneStop, noted. “I can go in and see what the volume was at a specific time and how long each agent took to complete each task.”

• Limited flexibility in service delivery

Modern students expect to engage with services both in person and remotely. Institutions that lack virtual options or flexible appointment booking are often seen as outdated or out of touch.

Union College adapted quickly: “It’s also up to the student if they want to do an in-person or virtual appointment; those are offered to them,” said Deverona. This hybrid approach meets students where they are, and eases physical congestion.

Texas One Stop has also integrated phone, website, and kiosk check-in to ensure accessibility. With over 200 buildings on campus, this flexibility has been essential.

At the University of Manitoba, managing student traffic was a persistent challenge. In the words of Ali Wood-Warren, the director of the Student Transitions and Success Centre, “Throughout the year, our service demands fluctuate dramatically… Managing the ebb and flow of traffic patterns was previously challenging, but now we have the ability to communicate with students waiting in our queue, regardless of where they are on campus.” This shift improved service capacity and allowed students to use their wait time productively, an expectation in any modern campus experience these days.

• Inconsistent communication between frontline and back-office teams

When service staff can’t reach the right internal teams quickly, small problems escalate. At UB, communication used to rely on siloed systems and manual processes.

“We use WaitWell for line management, and we’ve also implemented Teams chat channels to connect with our home offices faster,” Vick shared. “This has allowed our front-tier staff to resolve tickets in-house, instead of escalating them.”

That combination of a live dashboard, chat integrations, and clearly assigned queues has made it easier to route issues in real-time.

Student expectations won’t slow down, and neither should institutions. The good news is that many of these problems can be solved with the right strategy, data visibility, and commitment to service design. As some of the institutions mentioned above have shown, it’s possible to modernize while remaining student-first. The future of student support (or customer service in higher education, if you like) is responsive, informed, and collaborative.