<strong>Illustrative example.</strong> This engagement is fictional and exists to show format and tone. Replace it with a real case study, with written client permission, or relabel this section before publishing.
Headline: Enquiry response from 3 days to 4 hours, and a 19% lift in application conversion At a glance: Higher education institution · 14,000 students · Sales Cloud + Experience Cloud + SIS integration · 20 weeks
The problem
Enquiries arrived into departmental inboxes and were answered when someone had time — a median of just over three days in a market where competitor institutions responded same-day. Nobody could report on enquiry volume by course, because there was no shared record.
The wider problem was the fragmentation of the relationship. Recruitment, admissions, student services and alumni each held their own system, so a graduate’s history restarted three times.
What we found
- 11 departmental inboxes handling enquiries with no SLA and no shared visibility.
- Median first response 3.2 days; 14% of enquiries never received one.
- Applicant records recreated at each stage; no linkage from enquiry to enrolment.
- Student-success signals (attendance, engagement, support contacts) in three systems, unreviewed until failure.
- Alumni contact data 41% stale.
Lifelong constituent model where one person carries roles over time · Central enquiry capture with routing, SLA and escalation · Applicant portal with status visibility and document upload · SIS integration contract defining field ownership at each lifecycle stage · Early-alert case management combining attendance, engagement and support signals · Alumni engagement with self-service contact update.
01 · Weeks 1–3 — Lifecycle mapping and role model design. 02 · Weeks 4–6 — Enquiry capture, routing and SLA build; deployed early as a standalone win. 03 · Weeks 7–11 — SIS integration contract and build. 04 · Weeks 12–15 — Applicant portal. 05 · Weeks 16–18 — Early-alert case management with student services. 06 · Weeks 19–20 — Alumni module, training and launch ahead of the recruitment cycle.
Results (first full recruitment cycle)
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Median first response to enquiry | 3.2 days | 4.1 hours |
| Enquiries with no response | 14% | 0.4% |
| Enquiry-to-application conversion | baseline | +19% |
| Early-alert cases raised before failure point | 12% | 58% |
| Alumni records with verified contact details | 59% | 87% |
What we’d do differently
Deploying enquiry routing in week six was the best decision in the project — it built credibility that carried the harder integration work. We’d now design every long programme with a deliberate visible win in the first six weeks.
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