Queen's University has successfully introduced a new approach to service. In order to improve student access to services, the newly opened Student Guidance Centre offers a wide range of services at a single contact point. As part of the new initiative, a Customer Flow Management solution from Q-Matic is used to monitor and improve the operational efficiency.
The setting
As the first initiative of its kind in Ireland, Queen's University in Belfast has opened a Student Guidance Centre that offers services from several different departments. The centre acts as a single point of contact for students, enabling them to have their enquiries resolved in one place. Previously, many of the services now being offered in the new centre could be found in different buildings spread out across the city and the university campus.
The university has 24,000 students of which 4,000 are first year students. This is the group that uses most of the services offered in the centre. As part of a £2.7 million refurbishment programme, a Q-Matic system was installed to help organise the flow of students, and above all to track the traffic and the efficiency of the organisation.
The solution
The centre has a team of staff members who are generic and deal with all types of enquiries – a completely new concept that met with some controversy in the beginning.
"Initially there was some resistance as staff from the different departments weren't sure what to expect," said Dorothy Fee, Student Affairs Coordinator at the centre. "The queuing system actually helped alleviate some of the nervousness around this issue," she said. "I could tell staff that they were able to call students forward depending on enquiry, thus ensuring staff would be able to deal with the services that matched their own skills and specialities."
The centre sees hundreds of students each day and using the statistics generated by the Q-Matic system, Dorothy is able to see when the busiest periods occur. Between 11am and 3pm has proven to be the most popular time for students to come in and Dorothy has been able to staff the centre accordingly to meet the demand.
"I am also able to rota the relevant staff and train them on the busiest services," she said.
As she can see what students come in for, she realised at an early stage that more than 50 per cent of the enquiries were for student ID cards. As a result Dorothy was able to install a second machine for making ID cards, effectively doubling the centre's capacity and successfully meeting demand whilst evening out the flow of students.
Services offered at the Student Guidance Centre
- Admissions Service
- Careers, Employability and Skills
- Counselling Service
- Disability Services
- Income and Student Finance
- Learning Development Service
- Student Records and Examinations
- Welcome and Orientation
- Widening Participation Unit
The future
Going forward, Dorothy Fee is looking to publish the data generated by the system to show efficiency savings. Once she has the relevant service level agreements set up with the various service departments, she will need the tool to prove the centre's efficiency.
She is also planning to use the system more fully by including the students' ID numbers on the enquiries to enable her to track individual enquiries.
In addition, Dorothy has been asked to offer more services at the centre, such as enrolment. Until now, students have had to go to one of three sites around the campus to enrol.
"In the future, this may be done from the Student Guidance Centre. The queuing system will be handy then as we will need to cope with massive numbers of students over specific periods of time," Dorothy said. "The system will also be useful at graduation time, when we get a massive influx of students coming in to collect their gowns over a short period of time."