Registering for classes has gotten a little easier with a new branch within the Enrollment Services Center, where students can now make phone calls with their questions instead of waiting in long lines.

Located in the Mike Loya Academic Services Building, the Contact Center was created in September 2013 to answer the questions of students regarding registration. Rather than referring students to multiple departments with the same question or providing wrong information, trained UTEP students can answer questions about a multitude of topics.

It began with a handful of students answering phone calls for more than 23,000 students.This year the staff has expanded to 30 agents.

“We want to get all the student’s enrollment services questions answered in one stop so they can just focus on registering and getting into class,” said Christopher Ulibarri, director of technology implementation at the center.

After collecting and analyzing two years worth of data pertaining to all of the problems students face during enrollment, Ulibarri helped create a support model that addresses many of the complaints that students gave through feedback from surveys.

Ulibarri said most of the data was collected during peak week, or the week prior to the start of a semester, which is when the Enrollment Services Center experiences the most traffic by students attempting to register.

“We’re focusing 100 percent on customer service by understanding, hopefully beforehand, student needs and then addressing it when they come in,” Ulibarri said.

Ulibarri said the Enrollment Services Center receives about 8,000 calls during peak week. When the Contact Center started, those calls were reduced to half the following year. He said the decrease comes from taking the time to explain all the issues on the first call, which takes away the need for the student to call again.

Aldo Fuentes, senior operations and supply chain management major, works at the Contact Center to assist with calls – answering questions from financial aid, admissions, and issues involving Student Business Services.

“Basically, we try to help the students through the phones,” Fuentes said.

All employees rotate between assisting students who walk in and assisting students who prefer to talk over the phone.

“Students come and tell us they’re having trouble registering. If they have a restriction when they try registering we tell them what kind of hold they have or what they need to do in order to register for classes,” said Dante Pena, junior kinesiology major, who has worked for Enrollment Services for a year.

Ulibarri said there are three threshold levels to the support model, where certain student issues, such as having holds removed or billing and payment arrangements, are not resolved by the Enrollment Services Center.

“Whenever a student calls in, they’re going to tell us what the issue is. We’re going to troubleshoot it and once it’s resolved, we’ll close it,” Ulibarri said.

At level one, students are sent to the appropriate departments to resolve the issue.

Every call and visit is documented to not only improve the quality of service, but to make adjustments to accommodate the changing needs of students.

Ulibarri emphasizes the importance of good customer service and making student’s overall enrollment experience a positive one.

“We want them to say good things about us,” Ulibarri said.

Ben Woolridge may be reached at [email protected].