Clearing Week: One Week. One Shot.

^{7. Make or Break}

For universities, clearing isn't just another admissions process - in just a few days, institutions can generate up to 75% of their new annual revenue. But with that opportunity comes pressure — on systems, staff, and student experience.
And if your contact centre can't cope? Missed calls, missed connections, and missed high-quality candidates.
The Smart Way to Clear - SCC’s scalable cloud contact centre solutions are built for this pressure — giving universities the resilience, flexibility and intelligence to thrive during clearing.
Flexible contact centre licensing that scales with demand, so you're never over- or under-provisioned
Omnichannel contact options so students can reach you via voice, chat, or social — whatever works for them
Self-service and AI triage flows that handle high volumes, surface key info fast, and direct the right students to the right agents
Integrated triage logic that helps prioritise and route the highest-potential applicants — protecting academic outcomes and year-one retention
The Outcome? Better Students, Better Service, Better Results.
This isn’t just about answering the phone — it’s about protecting revenue, ensuring the best students make it through, and delivering a seamless experience under peak pressure.
Because in clearing, every second — and every student — counts.

Queen Mary University – Unified Communications and Contact Centre

Challenges

Queen Mary University’s end-of-life on-prem PBX couldn’t scale to meet the surge in demand during clearing week, which accounts for up to 85% of annual new revenue. With high dropout rates among students admitted with lower grades, it was critical to route high-quality candidates efficiently to clearing staff. A flexible, scalable contact centre solution was needed to support multichannel communication and ensure a smooth applicant experience.

Solution

SCC deployed a cloud-based RingCentral UCaaS and CCaaS platform for 2,000 users, with the ability to scale to 625 contact centre agents during peak periods. The solution unifies voice, video, messaging, and contact centre tools on a single platform.

Benefits

The platform flexes easily to meet clearing demand, allowing contact through students’ preferred channels—voice, chat, email, or social—while ensuring high-quality candidates are prioritised, protecting vital revenue, and easing pressure on staff during this critical period.

“We were on track to recruit the right number of students last year via clearing and Ring Central's capability was at the core of that”

Rachel Bence, CIO