The fifth interview was very interesting. The participant was a team member with a very different perspective on the question.

The participant currently works in a customer facing role and has had a lot of student interaction. This has changed though over the past three to four years as a result of the introduction of technologies particularly web based services that allow students to upload their work electronically which previously had to be submitted on paper. The paper had to be processed, catalogued passed on to markers, returned to the administration team and returned to students.

This process was very labour intensive and made the participant feel underappreciated especially when it came to how they felt they were viewed by other staff – particuallary academic staff.

The impact of technology on the team has been to free up time for the participant to spend more time with students and they felt that this allowed them to provide a much better and more personalised service than before,

The number of students coming in person has significantly reduced and this has meant that those coming in have more complex issues to deal with. This has allowed the participant to develop better customer service skills. The participant mentioned that they felt that the team had developed a better skill set and was more appreciated by academic staff as a group that had real expertise – rather than just being paper pushers.

The participant said that the SID system is a success but it is early days and there is a need to constantly reinforce the message – with staff and students – that it should be used.

This was a very interesting interview because the participant is a direct user of the SID system and had some useful insights. Once again I felt the interview went well and there were some very useful convergent points raised.