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Guidance on position of contact details

Version 1.0 Produced 2020-07-??

In July 2019, HESA provided some guidance around the desire for providers to supply the “best” contact details for a graduate and for these contact details to be supplied in position 1. This is due to the fact that the engagement strategy uses these details first, with the rest used within the next 2-3 days (except in cohort D where it takes slightly longer).

Since the original enquiry, we’ve done some further investigating into the way the provider portal and Confirmit ingest these contact details and have found that they are not processed in the order in which providers may enter them into the portal. The portal treats all supplied contact details equally. This is due to the requirement that providers should be able to update and delete contact details throughout the contact period. An automated deduplication process runs as details are uploaded or updated and orders them with no preference, as all supplied contact details should be accurate (as verified by the graduate) thus treated equally.

It is for this reason that unfortunately, despite our original guidance, it is not possible to record the contact detail in position 1 and hold its position throughout the field period. We appreciate that this has caused additional work for colleagues, for which we apologise.

We are keen to emphasise that the use of emails in a revised order has no material impact to providers’ graduates and response rates. All email addresses supplied (regardless of position) will be sent an equal number of invitation and reminder emails as per the engagement plan. Despite the default reordering of email addresses, in cohort D, we achieved a similar response rate from email addresses in slot 1 and 2; with 96% graduates having up to two email addresses.

Furthermore, we can also confirm that mobile numbers still continue to be utilised before landline numbers as we know they are more likely to allow direct contact with graduates. As with email addresses, all phone numbers get utilised until successful contact with the graduate has been established.

The underlying principle of using multiple contact details is to maximise our chances of making contact with the graduates and make sure every email to a secondary address serves as another reminder in its own right.

If you have any further questions about this, please email the Liaison team directly.

Need help?

Contact Liaison by email or on +44 (0)1242 388 531.