Case Study: Florida SouthWestern State College achieves rapid remote support for 10,000+ students with Olark

How FSW customized Olark to serve its students and faculty

Florida SouthWestern State College (FSW), a public institution serving over 22,000 students, faced a sudden campus shutdown on March 13, 2020 due to COVID-19. With student services offline and a pressing need to authenticate and support students remotely, FSW’s IT team had to rapidly find a way to maintain advising, admissions, and financial aid support without in-person contact.

FSW implemented Olark within a week, using its JavaScript API to build an SSO integration with the college portal and configuring Groups to route chats to the right departments—without outside consultants. The chat solution allowed students to connect in seconds, enabled staff to verify identities and pull up records during conversations, and served over 10,000 students in the first three months while slashing wait times from 30–60 minutes to minutes.

Florida SouthWestern State College

Jason Dudley

Chief Information Officer