How Can Universities Make Student Communication Easier?

*Updated 22 September 2026*

Universities already communicate with students constantly.

Emails are sent. Portals display announcements. Teams and learning platforms provide updates. Contact centres answer calls. Departments manage their own inboxes. Students receive SMS messages, app notifications and information through websites and social channels.

The challenge is no longer simply how to communicate more.

It is ensuring students can identify what matters, reach the right service and move between university departments without the communication journey becoming fragmented.

Jisc's 2024/25 Higher Education Digital Experience Insights Survey, based on 15,398 students across 30 UK providers, found that 86% rated their digital learning environment above average. Yet 60% had experienced Wi-Fi problems and 37% had lacked access to a suitable device at some point. Students also called for clearer communication about available digital support.

Those findings show that higher education has made considerable digital progress.

The next stage is making that digital environment easier to navigate, more connected and more responsive to individual student needs.

This is particularly important while institutions are under financial pressure. The Office for Students reported in May 2026 that 35.8% of English higher education providers recorded a deficit in 2024/25, with 42.7% forecast to do so in 2025/26 without mitigating action.

Better communication therefore has to improve the student experience without creating unnecessary operational effort or another layer of technology to manage.

Why Is Student Communication Becoming Harder?

Students move between more channels, systems and services than ever before.

A prospective student might first interact with a university website, attend a virtual event, make an admissions enquiry and later call during Clearing.

Once enrolled, that same person may communicate with academic departments, accommodation, finance, welfare, careers and student services through completely different systems.

From the university's perspective, those are separate functions.

From the student's perspective, they are all the university.

This is where communication can break down.

The problem is not necessarily that a message was never sent. It may be that the student received too many unrelated messages, did not know which channel to use, contacted the wrong department or had to explain the same situation several times.

The existing article is right to identify communication overload as a challenge, but the answer is no longer simply “be omnichannel”.

Adding more channels without connecting them can actually create more fragmentation.

The stronger approach is to decide which channel suits each interaction, how enquiries move between services and how context follows the student throughout that journey.

What Does Good Higher Education Communication Look Like?

Effective university communication should make the institution easier to navigate.

Email still has an important role for formal and detailed information. SMS may be better for an urgent reminder. Telephone support becomes valuable when a situation is complicated or sensitive. Chat can help students resolve straightforward questions quickly. Video may be appropriate when more personal or visual support is required.

The goal is not to make every message available everywhere.

It is to create appropriate channel choice without forcing students to understand the university's internal structure.

A stronger communications strategy should consider:

• What does the student need to achieve?
• How urgent is the communication?
• Does the interaction require a response or action?
• Is the information sensitive or complex?
• Which channel is most appropriate?
• Does another department need to become involved?
• Will the student need to repeat information?
• What happens if the first contact does not resolve the issue?

Britannic's Higher Education proposition brings together communications, contact centre technology, automation and infrastructure to support this wider student journey rather than treating each channel separately.

This also connects with Britannic's updated article on helping international students feel connected at university, where communication accessibility becomes particularly important when students are navigating unfamiliar university services.

How Can Universities Connect Communication Across Departments?

One of the biggest opportunities is moving away from isolated departmental communications.

Admissions may have its own inbox.

Student services may use another system.

Accommodation could have a separate telephone number.

Finance might operate through email.

Welfare could use another route again.

When those interactions are disconnected, the student becomes responsible for joining everything together.

Contact centre and workflow technology can help create a more coordinated service.

Britannic's INBOX Enterprise, for example, can capture interactions from email, SMS, WhatsApp and social channels and connect them with workflows, CRM, ticketing and contact centre systems. This allows an enquiry to become a structured process rather than simply another message waiting for somebody to forward it.

The same principle applies to voice and digital contact centre interactions.

Mitel MiContact Centre Business can combine voice, email, SMS, webchat and other digital channels with skills-based routing, workflows and CRM integration.

Britannic's work with Queen Mary University London demonstrates this approach. The university's Mitel contact centre was integrated with its CRM and augmented with technology to automate, prioritise and pre-qualify digital interactions. This helped the university manage enquiries more efficiently while improving its ability to capture and interrogate communication data.

The important outcome is not having an omnichannel contact centre.

It is ensuring that the student's enquiry reaches the right service with enough information for somebody to act on it.

How Can Universities Make Communication More Inclusive?

Communication is only effective if students can access and understand it.

Jisc found that 60% of students experienced Wi-Fi problems and 37% lacked access to a suitable device at some point. It also found that these barriers were more pronounced among international students and some minority ethnic groups.

This means universities should avoid assuming that an app, portal or digital-first process will automatically be accessible to everybody.

Channel choice should remain flexible.

Language also matters.

A student may be academically proficient in English while still finding it difficult to explain a complicated accommodation, finance or welfare issue during a stressful conversation.

Britannic's NetTranslate can provide real-time AI translation across voice, Microsoft Teams and chat in more than 100 languages, helping universities provide multilingual communication without creating an entirely separate support environment.

Human interpretation will remain appropriate for some specialist or highly sensitive conversations. The important point is giving university services more options when language might otherwise prevent a student from communicating clearly.

Accessibility should therefore be considered across language, channel, device, connectivity and individual circumstances, rather than being treated as a single technical requirement.

Where Should AI And Automation Fit Into Student Communication?

AI is already becoming part of the student digital experience.

Jisc found that 34% of students were using AI tools as part of their learning, while 23% had access to AI provided by their institution. Students expressed enthusiasm alongside concerns about reliability, academic integrity and inconsistent guidance.

Universities face a similar balance when applying AI to communications.

AI and automation can be useful for:

• Answering repeated questions
• Categorising digital enquiries
• Understanding student intent
• Routing requests
• Summarising interactions
• Automating routine updates
• Identifying recurring themes
• Supporting employees with relevant information

They should not make it harder for a student to reach a person when the conversation requires judgement, reassurance or specialist knowledge.

This is particularly important in areas such as welfare, complaints and complex financial or academic circumstances.

Britannic's AI Engine can analyse emails, transcribed calls and digital conversations for themes and sentiment, then feed insight into CRM, contact centre and workflow systems.

That creates a more useful role for AI than simply generating another chatbot response.

A university might identify that hundreds of students are repeatedly contacting different departments about the same issue. Rather than simply handling those enquiries faster, the institution can investigate why the demand exists and whether the underlying process or communication needs changing.

This aligns with Britannic's broader Digital Transformation approach, which focuses on connecting people, processes, data and technology around measurable outcomes.

How Can Universities Keep Critical Communications Available?

Communication becomes particularly important during periods of exceptional demand.

Clearing is one of the clearest examples.

Thousands of prospective students may need to speak with universities during a short period, and missed calls can have significant consequences for both applicants and institutions.

Britannic's work with the University of Kent demonstrates how communications resilience can support this.

During one Clearing period, more than 10,000 calls were handled across two weeks. Britannic's NetX platform gave the university control over call routing and capacity, while extensive SIP load testing and failover testing were carried out before the event. If an academic was unavailable when a prospective student called back, NetX could redirect the call to the Clearing hotline rather than allowing the opportunity to be lost.

This principle applies beyond Clearing.

Student welfare lines, admissions, accommodation, security and other critical university services all need communications that remain available when systems, sites or connectivity experience problems.

Britannic's NetX SIP platform provides routing, number management, reporting and business continuity capabilities across enterprise voice.

Resilience should therefore form part of communication strategy from the beginning rather than being tested only when something fails.

What Should Universities Review In Their Communication Strategy?

Universities do not necessarily need another communications platform.

The first step should be understanding where the existing student journey creates friction.

Britannic's Connected University Communication Test can be used to review six areas:

• Reach — Can students access the university through appropriate channels when they need help?
• Relevance — Are communications targeted enough to avoid important information disappearing in unnecessary noise?
• Routing — Does an enquiry reach the correct team without the student having to understand internal structures?
• Resolution — Can the receiving team act on the request without unnecessary hand-offs or repeated explanations?
• Resilience — What happens to critical communications during high demand, outages or disruption?
• Insight — Is interaction data being used to understand recurring student needs and improve the underlying service?

The review should cover the whole student lifecycle.

That includes recruitment, admissions, Clearing, enrolment, teaching, student services, welfare, accommodation, finance and post-study engagement.

Different stages may require different channels, but the experience should still feel connected.

Britannic's article on digital transformation in UK universities provides a wider view of how AI, integration and digital services can support that institutional transformation.

Better Communication Makes The University Easier To Navigate

Higher education institutions have already invested heavily in digital platforms.

Jisc's findings show that students recognise much of that progress, with 86% rating their digital learning environment positively.

The next challenge is less about adding technology and more about connecting what already exists around the student.

Students should not need to decide which department owns their problem.

They should not have to restart an enquiry simply because it moves from email to telephone.

International students should not face unnecessary language barriers.

Routine interactions should not consume employee time where automation could deal with them effectively.

Critical communications should remain available when demand or disruption increases.

Most importantly, universities should be able to understand what student interactions are telling them about the services behind those conversations.

Britannic Technologies supports higher education institutions across unified communications, contact centres, NetX, NetTranslate, AI, workflow automation, analytics and managed services, helping connect communications around student and institutional outcomes rather than individual technologies.

Universities reviewing student communications can speak to Britannic about identifying where journeys are becoming fragmented, where employees are losing time and where existing technology could be connected or optimised before introducing another platform.