Improve student service experience in higher education

How can universities drive better student experience, digital enablement and cost effectiveness in student services?

How improving student services and management can benefit higher education providers.

Key observations | Rethinking student services | Download report | Watch webinar | Contact us

Australia’s university students are changing and their service expectations are changing too. Keeping up is harder than ever before.

While investment in improved service experience is on the rise in Australia’s universities, we continue to see students struggling through tasks such as enrolment, fees, timetabling, course progression and graduations, experiencing service provision that is not at the standard they receive in other aspects of their lives.

Where and why are our institutions getting stuck?

To find out, KPMG spoke to senior university colleagues across approximately half of Australia’s universities who are seeking to improve their offerings in student administration and service.

Download report

Student services in the age of the customer

(PDF 4.0MB)

Improving student service delivery

Key observations

In KPMG's 2021 report – Student experience in the age of the customer – we observed that university students are becoming more diverse, digital, discerning, demanding and debt-averse and that universities are finding it increasingly difficult to meet students’ needs.

We argued that student experience strategy needs to holistically considers students’ needs as learners, people and customers.

In our 2024 report we examine how these trends are impacting student service provision, which is primarily related to students’ customer experience but has significant impacts on their learner and personal experiences too.

The gap is rapidly widening between service experience in the higher education and what students experience in other areas of their lives.

Talking to senior university executives, we found that:

1

Student experience is increasingly important to university executives, but it is widely acknowledged that it is becoming more difficult to meet students’ needs and expectations.
2

Student services are delivered in a deeply complex environment, and this complexity makes successful reform difficult
3

The higher education sector is lagging in understanding how to best leverage customer experience tools to improve student service provision, which is also impacting students’ learner and personal experiences.
4

Institutions are struggling to build and maintain the confidence, capability and commitment to address these issues over the long haul.

Rethinking student services

We identified six big shifts that are needed to modernise student services and better meet students’ needs.

Our report lays out the mechanisms to help universities to shift their student service models:

FROM

1. Compliance-driven

Student-centric

2. Supplier-led

Service-led

3. Disconnected

Digitally connected

4. Insight-poor

Insight-rich

5. Fragmented

Partnered

6. High-cost

High-value

Based on our deep sector expertise, our team can help you find the right technology solutions to uplift your service delivery processes and respond to the challenges presented by modern student demands.

Enquire now