Leeds Beckett University has a student population of more than 24,000, with many joining through Clearing each year. Here’s how Vodafone storm® helps university staff run the process smoothly.
“I was every nervous to enter Clearing,” recalls Leeds Beckett University Student Ambassador, Chelea Wright.
“I remember calling up. I had every document I thought was relevant on my floor and I felt like, had I received anything that was less than positive, I probably would have gone elsewhere.”
Like Chelea, more than 77,000 students secured their place at university through the UCAS Clearing service in 2025. A process available to students who have either not received any offers, missed the grades required, changed their plans or applied after the cut-off date.1
While Clearing runs between July and October each year, however, the majority of activity takes place across the first few hours of results day.
“Around 90% of our enquiries come within a four- or five-hour window on the morning of results day,” says Joe Rossiter, Director of University Recruitment and Partnerships, Leeds Beckett University, “which can be quite an intense time for students and their families.”
Unsurprisingly, it’s also a busy time for those on the other side of the phoneline, who are tasked with matching prospective students with course vacancies.
Keeping availability up
Thankfully, the admissions team at Leeds Beckett University is supported by Vodafone storm®, a cloud-based contact centre solution that helps tie all aspects of digital customer service together.
Developed in partnership with cloud communications provider Content Guru, the solution helps organisations connect the dots between customers and agents – a relationship that remains critical to both students and employees.
“We think it’s really important that somebody’s able to talk to a human on the other end of the phone,” says Rebecca Spurr, Admissions Manager, Leeds Beckett University, “someone who can support them in making the right decisions for their future.”
To ensure these conversations can happen, Vodafone storm®provides Leeds Beckett University with real-time data. This allows the university to monitor how many students are calling in, so they can make more informed decisions, such as adding more agents to handle the increased demand.
“Because it’s cloud-based, we can scale up the number of licences and then reduce that when demand reduces,” says Joe.
“We can track the peaks and compare them with previous years. And it also means that, if we have a queue, we’re able to add more agents to that line to get calls through quicker.”
Securing a place
With each agent potentially speaking to several different individuals in any one shift, it’s vital that all information shared remains safe and secure – not only to protect data privacy, but also to preserve the institution’s future.
“In terms of the recruitment of students,” says Joe, “our ability to be able to meet student and enquiry demand is fundamental for the university’s financial stability.”
This is where Vodafone storm®’s fully sovereign architecture can help. Hosted in Vodafone UK data centres, and connected directly to the Vodafone UK network, the solutionoffers the high levels of security that is needed when dealing with sensitive customer queries.
Keeping customer data both hosted and managed in the UK not only ensures compliance requirements, but also strengthens protection against geopolitical or cyber risks.
“We had an example where the phone lines were being flooded by a bot,” adds Joe. “Content Guru was able to identify that really quickly and stop it from happening, which meant the operation wasn’t impacted at all.”
Taking the next step
As a modern, forward-looking institution, Leeds Beckett University remains keen to embrace any new developments that can improve the student recruitment process for all parties involved.
“We’ve seen the onboarding of the live chat function within Vodafone storm®,” says Joe, “and we’re really keen to look at some of the developments in the AI space and what that might mean.”
Thanks to AI, Vodafone storm® userscan now take advantage of real-time transcription and summarisation (RTAS) – an in-built tool that automatically takes notes for agents during each call.
The technology can even summarise the conversation in real-time, providing prompts that agents can use to move the conversation forward.
Regardless of these advancements, however, human connection will always remain at the centre of successful customer care, as Chelea suggests upon looking back at her own Clearing experience.
“I was very nervous to enter Clearing, so I was very glad that I got to speak to a person, because you could feel how genuine they were.”
