Consistent Email Templates at City of Glasgow College
LISA HARDY
Head of Student Support and Wellbeing
City of Glasgow College
The City of Glasgow College's student advisors' team wanted to improve the tone and consistency of responses from their shared inbox. The team developed templates for the 19 most common query types, providing students with clear information and choice over what happens next.
The challenge
The Student Advisors' team at City of Glasgow College consists of 6.8FTE advisors and 1.4 FTE administrator, who together manage a support email handling a wide range of student queries. The volume of email traffic, however, was challenging to manage consistently, particularly with a shared inbox. The team noticed that more complex questions often turned into lengthy back-and-forth threads that would have been more effective as in-person conversations. Similarly, the team wanted to build a more consistent tone for their email communication, as part of their work to adopt a fully trauma-informed approach to student support.
The Approach
The team began by identifying the most common query types, settling on 19 categories covering the majority of messages. The categories covered a wide range of topics, including referrals from lecturers for wellbeing support, funding queries (particularly around HE funding entitlements and discretionary funds), homelessness, counselling appointments, and course progression.
For each category, the team developed a template that provided the relevant information, anticipating student needs. These templates utilise a consistent structure: an opening paragraph, a paragraph responding directly to the student's query, a paragraph setting out the options available to them, and a closing paragraph. Although some more complicated wellbeing templates run slightly longer, the team frequently uses links to the website to provide additional information without overloading the email itself. Similarly, templates were designed to be modified for individual circumstances — if a student provides background information in their query, the advisor monitoring the inbox can edit the templates as needed.
Two principles guided template creation: clarity and student choice. Given the college’s large ESOL population, the team ensured all jargon was removed, and internal terminology that would be unfamiliar to students was replaced with more understandable language (such as replacing ‘payruns’ with ‘the date the payment goes into your bank account’). Crucially, the templates were developed to give the student a clear sense of ownership over what happened next. Rather than telling students what would occur, templates offered a choice: would they prefer a phone call, a scheduled appointment, or a drop-in? Overall, the templates were designed to provide students with a clear understanding of their situation, their opportunities for support, and their options going forward.
The Impact
The templates were launched at induction in mid-August, and early results have been positive. The team have noticed a reduction in follow-up emails, meaning that students are receiving the necessary information more quickly, while also reducing the administrative burden on staff. Similarly, both lecturer referrals and attendance at drop-in sessions have lessened, suggesting that the templates answer most student queries without them having to reach out to staff for additional support.
The approach is still relatively new, and the team is conscious that the picture may shift as the year progresses and more complex issues around wellbeing, disciplinaries, and other sensitive matters come to the fore. More broadly, compassionate communications work is set to continue across the college, and the team hopes to gather formal student feedback in due course, potentially in collaboration with the Students' Association.