Milpark Education, a South African higher education provider, faced operational challenges in student support. Its legacy systems created data silos, slowing down student interactions. In collaboration with Enterprisecloud, Milpark Education implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and the Digital Contact Centre within a short 3-month timeframe. This change, along with additional Dynamics 365 and Azure technologies, helped Milpark Education transform its Student Support via a new integrated digital platform. Equipped with greater visibility, Milpark Education has reduced resolution times by 50% and escalation times by over 30%. This frees its support staff to bring more value by focusing on conversations required for more complex cases.
Milpark Education, founded in 1997, was one of South Africa’s first private institutions to offer advanced education programs focused on management. Initially hosting in-person classes only, it now offers online higher education through a mix of distance learning and short courses to approximately 2500 yearly graduates and a total of 20,000 students. “A lot of our students are full-time, working professionals who aim to advance in their personal development and careers. Many are multitasking—also caring for parents, children, or siblings, “shares Yolanda Mokoena, Communications Manager at Milpark. "We want to enable each student to be all that they can be by offering flexibility and support based on their unique online learning journey.”
Challenged by disconnected systems
Milpark Education’s strategic shift to online learning brought about numerous operational challenges. Managing student support requests via emails, phone, and a ticketing system, Milpark Education sought solutions to address the disjointed student interactions and siloed data. Joel Sangster, Business Development Manager at Milpark, explains, "Because we didn’t have a complete view of the student's profile, we had long turnaround times and errors. Imagine a student seeking help with their application, only to find our staff scrambling across multiple platforms to grasp their situation fully."
With poor visibility, Milpark Education couldn’t comprehensively manage internal workloads, either. "Because the information was hidden away in disparate systems or email inboxes, we had no way of understanding the real problems our students were facing," Sangster elaborates. “Internal feedback was anecdotal, because we had no underlying data to make operational decisions.”
Seeking an integrated business solution
Milpark Education saw the need for a more integrated, cloud-based solution. In an earlier project, Microsoft partner Enterprisecloud worked with Milpark Education to migrate back-office infrastructure to Microsoft Azure. It also replaced the legacy student admissions system with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Insights. This laid a solid foundation upon which Milpark Education could tackle the challenge of student support. “We soon realized how easy it was to make Dynamics 365 applications talk to each other. Dynamics 365 Customer Service became the natural choice for student support,” highlights Sangster. Milpark Education also addressed staff concerns around usability, call quality, and scalability with a proof of concept (PoC), enabling its team to test the solution by making and receiving over 1500 calls. “The Proof of Concept assured our staff that Dynamics 365 offered better capabilities and solidified our decision.”
“We soon realized how easy it was to make Dynamics 365 applications talk to each other. Dynamics 365 Customer Service became the natural choice for student support.”
Joel Sangster, Business Development Manager, Milpark Education
Delivering the solution
Enterprisecloud collaborated closely with business and IT stakeholders at Milpark Education to deliver a new solution for student support. Shaun Dale, Managing Director at Enterprisecloud explains, “We were working against the clock. Milpark’s busy student application and intake season was approaching, so we needed to act quickly and tactically to migrate them from their legacy systems to Dynamics 365, and prepare agents to effectively deal with the influx of student queries. The platform foundation that we had laid in previous projects afforded us a springboard to success, but Microsoft’s Digital Contact Centre was the true hero of this story.”
“The platform foundation that we had laid in previous projects afforded us a springboard to success, but Microsoft’s Digital Contact Centre was the true hero of this story.”
Shaun Dale, Managing Director, Enterprisecloud
Enterprisecloud’s team was able to rapidly configure dozens of shared email inboxes, 7 telephone numbers, and 2 web chat channels into one holistic omnichannel support desk, with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) routing of records and conversations to multiple queues of agents for optimized work assignments. The solution has empowered agents with a single pane of glass (SPOG) to effectively manage student queries. Dale adds, “Using Copilot, agents are now able to use generative AI to rapidly get up to speed on case details and respond to students using standardized templates that help them provide more personalized and professional responses. The results speak for themselves.”
The solution utilizes Dynamics 365 Customer Service along with Microsoft’s contact center capabilities as the core of this transformation. The Dynamics 365 voice channel was enabled through Azure Communication Services via Direct Routing and leverages conversational AI through Copilot Studio to provide a seamless, human-like IVR experience.
Microsoft Copilot brings generative AI embedded across Dynamics 365 Customer Service to make agents more productive by automating time-consuming case summarization, providing quick, relevant responses based on the context of conversation, all using natural language with an AI assistant at their fingertips.
Finally, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights provided one customer data platform (CDP) for a holistic view of each student. Milpark Education now gets engagement insights across all channels and can create trigger-based journeys to deliver personalized, contextual communications to students.
Gaining enhanced operational efficiency
In just four months after going live, Milpark Education resolved over 80,000 cases, and managed over 90,000 inbound and outbound calls as well as 1,500 chat conversations. With Dynamics 365 Customer Service CRM capabilities, student information is more readily available and centralized. This improves the efficiency and accuracy of student support. “When an agent is working on a student's case or answering the phone, they can click through to the student's ongoing application within our system and preview all the details,” says Sangster. “Thanks to this clarity, overall, we’ve decreased the average resolution time by 50% and reduced the average escalation time by more than 30%.”
“We’ve decreased the average resolution time by 50% and reduced the average escalation time by more than 30%.”
Joel Sangster, Business Development Manager, Milpark Education
Using Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Milpark Education is also getting a better idea of what students need. “We understand the kind of help they require and can restructure our operations to assign issues to the right people," adds Michael McInerney, Head of Student Experience Design at Milpark.
With a scalable, cloud-based solution, Milpark Education can manage seasonal spikes like intake periods and exam days more effectively. Sangster notes, “We fluctuate between days with very few cases and days where 300 students need a quick resolution.”
Milpark Education’s implementation of Dynamics 365 has also enhanced compliance and security. "Any email or phone call we receive is associated with a student from the outset," Sangster explains. “We can easily verify if any of the requests for sensitive information, such as exam results or payment statuses, are made through verified emails or phone numbers. This ensures we comply with the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).”
Building on valuable lessons
Milpark’s implementation of Dynamics 365 has laid the groundwork for future improvements. A new digital student support center, powered by Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Enterprisecloud's Enterprise Service Portal, is launching soon. This initiative will include knowledge articles on the portal, with future plans to integrate Microsoft Copilot. This integration will leverage its conversational generative AI capabilities to enhance self-service options for students. This will deflect support tickets and further enable our agents to more quickly resolve student queries," Sangster adds. The institution is also exploring Power Automate to automatically process administrative actions like extending study dates or exemption approvals so that staff can focus on complex cases requiring personal interaction and expert advice.
“The entire experience has made us much more aware of how much we need to do to maximize the solutions so we can see the benefits ripple throughout the student community. That’s been a very important learning experience for us, and we plan to take that into our future implementations,” Sangster concludes. “We recognize that adopting technology is not a one-and-done deal but a continuous effort. We've got a lot of future potential with Dynamics 365.”