Founded in 1948, the University of Hertfordshire is an innovative public university located in the county of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom. The University is the UK's leading business-facing university and an exemplar in the sector. With over 25,000 students, and more than 2,500 staff, the university supports a wide variety of undergraduates and post-graduates, spanning over 100 countries.
Core to the university campus is a busy Student Centre where students drop by for a wide variety of essential supporting services. With a high density of student population onsite, there is naturally a substantial demand for these services. The Service Centre needed an effective appointment and queue management system to regulate footfall and support staff in delivering a high quality of service.
Delivering a world-class student experience is a core value of the Student Centre. To ensure this happens, the university realized a need to automate and innovate the management of the flow of students.
At certain times of the academic year, there is a dramatic rise in the visitor traffic at the student center, which would increase the pressure on staff. As queues build up, with no supporting system in place, increasing wait times for students could naturally move towards frustration for those waiting and staff serving.
Q-nomy's channel partner and integrator in the region, ACF UK, worked with the university's customer service management team to implement a Student Flow Management solution, using the Q-Flow platform, that would achieve the following key goals:
Some of the main features of the solution provided are listed below:
Utilizing the Q-Flow API, the University of Hertfordshire IT team were able to build their own webpage for students to join queues or book appointments for the services they offer.
The IT team have now also enhanced the solution by deploying the queuing functionalities to a free-standing kiosk, which enhances the experience for students.
Whilst the student is waiting, they can visually see the progress of their wait time by tracking their unique ticket number on the digital screens located in the service center waiting area.
The screen designs are fully aligned to the University branding and can provide other information on products, services, and news to the waiting customers.
The service center staff utilize the Q-Flow web-based user interface to manage all cases, appointments, and walk-ins.
Staff can view all waiting students and current wait-time, enabling them to serve clients in an agile manner.
Q-Flow automatically prioritizes the order students are called in, based on wait times, service SLAs and other business requirements, and automatically opens a case screen to record details after a student is called forward.
The service center managers can perform calendar and queue management functionalities, obtain a real-time view of all waiting students and students in service, and see the current and expected wait time for each student.
Managers can access an array of management reports for all appointment and walk-in services, and can take immediate actions to route students between queues or open new queues.
The solution is hosted locally on the university servers and network, making for a quick installation and simple local environment support.
The following results have been reported:
