Team Profile: Contact Service Centre

While the Contact Service Centre (CSC) is often a prospective student's first contact with UWS, there are other services the team provides to assist current students, staff and the wider UWS community. Here, you'll find out more about the team and their role at UWS.

Who works in the CSC team?
The CSC is a dynamic team of up to 35 current UWS students, appointed as Contact Service Officers. They are led by Contact Services Coordinators Zohra Arbabzada and Fran Ryan, and the Contact Services Manager, Deborah Moldrich. The Switchboard team is also housed at the CSC.

What does the CSC team do?
The CSC primarily responds to domestic and international course enquiries from prospective students. This involves handling phone calls, emails and web requests as well as attending events such as Open Day and careers markets. Contact Service Officers are able to use their perspective as current students to relate to enquirers and provide personalised assistance. The CSC also services Parking enquiries, Capital Works Facilities requests, Badanami enquiries, iPad enquiries from students, tutorial registration enquiries (seasonal) and the complaints advice line. The CSC is also available to provide short-term casual assistance to various divisions of UWS in need of a helping a hand. We are available to conduct outbound call campaigns, outbound mail campaigns, event staffing assistance, data entry and administrative assistance among other tasks. Please let us know if we can assist you. Also, do not hesitate to direct prospective student enquiries to the CSC, including using our number on any communications to prospective students. However, please let us know if you do, so we can prepare for a potential influx of enquiries and ensure we are up to date with the information we'll need to best assist prospective students.

Where is the CSC team located?
The CSC operates in Building AF, on the Werrington North campus. Fun fact: the building was originally dorms for mentally disabled boys.

Who does the CSC team work with?
The CSC works predominantly with prospective students, including Greater Western Sydney, domestic and international applicants. This brings the CSC into regular contact with various Schools, UWSCollege, Scholarships, International and the Admissions departments. As we also facilitate Parking and Capital Works Facilities enquiries from staff and students, this sees the CSC interact with the Parking, Security and CWF divisions of UWS. In saying that, the CSC and Switchboard often receive an array of varied enquiries which require collaboration across the wider UWS community.

What would be a good example of the work that you are involved in?
A high proportion of UWS students are the first in their family to attend university. Many of these applicants first start by making an enquiry with the CSC. At this stage, Contact Service Officers are able to provide the prospective student with advice and point them in the right direction based on their interests. The CSC can instruct the prospective student on how to apply, what bonus points they may be eligible for, how to secure an early offer and, lastly, how to accept their offer. Through this process, the CSC may answer a number of phone calls, respond to several emails and meet the student in person at a UWS event or at their school. The CSC guides applicants into becoming UWS students.

What challenges does the team face?
The greatest challenge faced by the CSC involves managing the fluctuating volume of enquiries across the calendar year. There is a higher concentration of enquiries leading up to the Autumn and Spring course intakes, which increases the number of phone and email enquiries received by the CSC. The team combats this by rostering more staff on during these periods, and as we only employ current UWS students, our staff are generally highly available during session breaks which aligns with most of our peak periods.

At times we also find it challenging to keep up to date with all of the changes and information updates around the University. To overcome this, we hope to work on further developing collaborative and collegial relationships with other units, particularly Schools, to ensure they are aware of the CSC and keep us updated with the most current information. This will help us help them!

What is the team focusing on in the next 12 months?
Future focus for the CSC is centred on the customer and enhancing their experience when enquiring with UWS. The University takes pride in being a friendly and approachable tertiary education institution and the CSC aims to imbue this in their conduct. Some initiatives over the coming year include the integration of the new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software into daily tasks so that a more efficient information service is delivered to customers across the coming year. The CSC team is also assessed quarterly on their customer service and benchmarked against competitors and other customer service institutions; the CSC is consistently ranked as the number one tertiary call centre in NSW, an accolade we will be working hard to maintain. Another focus for the CSC over the coming months is to increase the intra-organisational awareness of the CSC.