USA Process Improvement Committee
OUTCOME DOCUMENTATION FORM
Improvement Number: 20
Original Improvement: One key phone number needs to be published that will reach a person in
departments that utilize phone trees.
Research: Telecommunications provided a list of 35 telephone trees. Each telephone tree extension
was called to see if a department representative answered the line, or gave an option to speak to a
representative.
Final Outcome: During the research period, with the exception of Financial Aid’s primary number, all
extensions on the telephone tree list either had an employee answer the line, or provided an option for
the caller to be transferred to a representative in the department. The University of South Alabama’s
Financial Aid Office, like many other academic institutions, contracts a “call center” to handle the
approximately 10,000 calls received annually. The Financial Aid call center can then pass messages on to
employees, as needed.
As an additional resource, a departmental telephone directory is available on the University of South
Alabama website at http://www.southalabama.edu/directories/departments.html. Departments can be
queried by all or part of the departmental title.