Easily Implementing Unibuddy as a Recruitment Tool at Brock University

The challenge

The advent of online-learning-dominance opened up more opportunities and flexibility to applicants and, with it, increased competition amongst schools in Ontario. So, the Brock team sought out Innovative avenues to communicate with prospective students.

Nathaniel Webb, Recruitment Officer at Brock University says “If there’s one important element that’s emerged over the past years, it’s that prospective students greatly value hearing about post-secondary life from current students themselves.”

Webb was noticing an influx of prospective students seeking firsthand information to learn more about experiences both on campus and in the local community. In response to this trend, the recruitment team aimed to create a more robust experience for prospective students. Their goal was to provide a platform for prospective students to connect with the school and expand recruitment efforts beyond typical communications campaigns, such as online fairs and school presentations.

The solution

Although Brock University already had a live-chat feature on their website, it lacked a peer-to-peer chat capability. During their exploration of innovative technologies, they came across Unibuddy. Webb got into contact with a Unibuddy representative and discovered the platform’s user-friendly nature and how it facilitated safe and seamless connections between prospective and current students. “We were offered a tour of the platform, and were impressed with how easy it was for both prospective students to navigate, and our current students to help field questions. The whole package is integrated nicely, and it’s simple for all users to make the most of the platform with very little training required.”

“Setting up ‘Buddies’ on the platform and integrating Unibuddy within our website took only a matter of minutes, not hours. All of the relevant ‘codes’ are very easy to navigate and only require a very basic knowledge of web development. Our team was thoroughly impressed by how quickly everything was up and running, and how natural it looks on our website.”

Brock has implemented chat widgets on every page within their brocku.ca/ discover series of websites as well as pop-up cards. Webb and his team also promote Unibuddy through outgoing communications activities and programming. These include campus tours, online and in-person recruitment presentations, and web pages. “We try to promote Uniubuddy wherever we can, as some students might be hesitant to give us a call or send an email, but the platform does a nice job of breaking down that barrier. It clearly defines who each of our staff and student ambassadors is, which makes getting into contact with our school a much less intimidating experience.”

The results 

Brock University immediately started seeing measurable impact by using Unibuddy. Since beginning the partnership, the recruitment team has seen close to 7500 conversations on the platform. In one year alone, they had close to 3000 conversations.

“Our student ambassadors have shared a handful of experiences which see the prospective students’ questions evolving over the course of a few months. What starts as a conversation focused on gathering information turns into questions about applying, and finally how to register for their courses, pay their fees, and begin their time at Brock.” This indicates that through the use of Unibuddy, students are getting answers to their questions at all stages of their journey; helping guide them towards enrollment. 

“In our time with Unibuddy, the number of quality interactions that prospective students have had with both our students and staff has been like nothing we’ve ever experienced. Our strategy is to use UniBuddy to continue the conversation that is started in our initiative mentioned above. We hope to keep the Brock brand fresh in the minds of our guests and attendees by providing them easy access to get their questions answered.”