University students attend higher education institutions with the hopes of expanding their minds and preparing for their future. Unfortunately, all too often they got lost in a system that doesn't cater to individual student experience. Instead of feeling that the administration exists for the students, attendees quickly realize that they must conform to the needs of administrators in order to be successful. Scheduling appointments, registering for classes, even asking advisors for help all become nightmarish experiences filled with long lines, tired and impatient staff, and inadequate information.
Oftentimes, students will enter university fresh-faced, excited, and ready for success. Over time, however, ineffective university resources begin to take their toll. When simple tasks like registering for classes or dealing with financial aid eat up so much of their time, their desire to continue with their education slowly decreases. Students struggle to gain support from on-campus systems, which explains why consistently negative experiences with campus resources are one of the main sources of attrition; unfortunately, universities struggle to increase student satisfaction with limited resources. While student experience often ranks as a top priority for administrators, improving on-campus systems seems like an insurmountable task. A large student population means long lines--there doesn't seem to be a way around the problem. Fortunately, online appointment booking tools and an effective scheduling application both provide a modern solution to a large problem in higher education.
By using an electronic scheduling application like the one from QLess, academic institutions solve the problem of impatient students before it starts. Instead of expecting students to show up, wait in a line, and hope for the best, scheduling applications allow students to book an appointment ahead of time, eliminating the need for physical queues. In an age of ever-evolving technology, an electronic solution like a scheduling application can simultaneously push academic institutions into the modern age and improve the student experience.
Perhaps the most instantaneous result of an effective scheduling application is the elimination of physical lines, without an electronic tool, students often run into long lines at every on-campus location. While long queues are frustrating at any juncture, they're particularly irritating during key points in the year. When students struggle to register for class, change programs, or ask advice about their courses due to long lines, attrition begins to develop. Instead of forcing long queues that lead to general frustration and discontent, a scheduling application assigns students a specific time with which they can complete their necessary necessary business. When each student knows the time and date they can sign up for new courses, registering for classes becomes a breeze. Even signing up to see an advisor becomes a stress-free task--each person is assigned an appointment time, eliminating the pressure on both the student and the administrator. By bypassing lines and allowing individuals to address their issues at a specified time, students no longer waste their time waiting for help. They gain more time to study, hang out with friends, or even just relax, all of which will contribute to higher student satisfaction.
While a scheduling application gives students more free time, it also tailors the university experience to a new generation. Current and incoming university students have grown up with technology. They're well-versed in mobile applications, and they actually prefer to handle most of their business electronically. Academic institutions, like any business, attract the most customers when they know their audience and tailor their services accordingly, for a mobile generation, mobile scheduling applications should be the norm.
The QLess scheduling application not only provides a mobile platform for students to access information from anywhere, it also sends text alerts to inform students of their appointment times. By creating a smartphone-friendly design, this scheduling application speaks to a main tenet of a new generation--consistent and reliable mobile communication. It ensures that students have simplified access to important academic information, and it lessens the possibility that they'll forget their appointment time and fail to show up.
While human error always stands as a distinct possibility, electronic scheduling applications allow students to feel comfortable an at-ease in their academic environments. By using technology they are already experts in, academic institutions create easy communication and connections between administrators and students. Students who feel comfortable in their academic environment are more likely to complete their university education, rather than cave to the pressures of campus life.
When students are constantly filtered into long lines and told to wait their turn, the personal element of higher education disappears. Students want to feel like their individual needs have significance, especially in an institution with the social weight of a college or university, many students accrue heavy debt in order to gain their degree. For instance, the desire to feel like their individual experience matters isn't misplaced. Difficulty gaining access to basic information and meeting essential needs for the future of their education is understandably frustrating.
Although electronic scheduling applications simply increase the organization and staff productivity on college campuses, they also allow each student to feel like they're receiving personalized attention. A specific appointment time communicates that each individual is important enough to receive focused attention, in which only their specific questions and needs matter. Simple as it may sound, a scheduling application can make all the difference in creating what feels like an individualized learning environment, despite the fact that each student receives the same time and attention to discuss their needs.
If students have a problem with campus systems, they want to make their opinions known; unfortunately, when it's difficult to even get a meeting in the first place, students don't feel that their concerns are being heard. Even if every individual problem can't be addressed immediately, allowing students to provide feedback on their experience can greatly improve student satisfaction with on-campus life. University processes may not change immediately, but allowing students to feel heard and appreciated subtly communicates that their opinion matters.
A scheduling application allows students the opportunity to address their concerns, without eating up the essential time of administrators. Instead of sitting in an office and listing off every complaint, students can fill out electronic surveys, effectively and quickly communicating the elements of the campus system that don't work for them. Feedback provides a two-fold opportunity for growth within the university. First, administrators hear student concerns quickly and easily, allowing them to adjust future processes to fix the most common problems. Second, students get their frustrations off their chest, lessening their irritation and providing hope that things will change in the future. A scheduling application allows universities to listen and react to the needs of their students, without decreasing the productivity of their staff. Students have a hand in the improvement of their education, and it doesn't come at a cost to either students or administrators.
Academic institutions are designed to push students towards graduation; unfortunately, the decision to leave university altogether is a common one. While each individual leaves their academic institution for their own reasons, dissatisfaction with campus resources often appears as one of the major sources behind drop-outs. Although it sounds like a no-brainer, it's worth stating that students who are satisfied with their college experience are far more likely to stay in school and eventually graduate.
An effective scheduling application increases student satisfaction with on-campus services. Students express their concerns, gain personalized attention, and generally improve their ability to function within a university setting. With a scheduling application, graduation seems like an achievable goal, rather than a faraway possibility. When students believe that they can graduate, they're much more likely to work towards that goal. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the work in front of them, students see a clear path towards reaching their degree. Sometimes a little hope and a plan is all it takes. Happy students who believe they can graduate are more likely to graduate. A scheduling application brings that goal to the forefront of their minds, encouraging students to stay in school and earn their degrees.
Using a QLess scheduling application can change the life of university students everywhere. By eliminating physical lines and cutting down waiting times, scheduling applications allow students to feel like they're experiencing the personalized education they deserve; in addition, the mobile platform results in easy use for a tech-savvy generation and an opportunity for instantaneous feedback on campus services. Happy students are much more likely to stay in school, and to spread positivity about their academic institution, both online and in their personal life. If you want to increase your graduation rates, you need to learn more about QLess systems today. If you think our system might be the right fit for you, contact us now. We'll answer all your questions about QLess solutions. For more on improving campus operations and retention rates, read about how we've created college campuses without lines.
A well-developed workflow management system simplifies business processes at colleges and universities tremendously. As a business, these institutions provide education and degrees to their customers, also known as their students. Although colleges and universities stand as one of the most essential business organizations in young adult life, technological systems on-campus are often not on par with the fast-paced, technology-driven environment of the day. As incoming students reflect more expertise in current technology, so should their places of education. A workflow management system can change life at your university, both for your students and for your administrators.
In a school environment, multiple departments and individuals work together to contribute to the larger education machine. While some units identify prospective students, review applications, and send out offers of admissions, other divisions focus on registering current students for classes, organizing appointments with advisors, and assisting students with on-campus problems. Each of these individual systems work together to contribute to the overall goal of the organization--educating students and pushing them towards graduation, hence the need for workflow management.
A workflow management system simplifies all these processes. It's a software that automates some elements of your workflow management, taking the pressure off of your staff members and increasing the happiness of your students. By creating a streamlined network for all your most essential campus processes, a workflow management system allows each student to feel valued and supported, and each staff member to increase their productivity and efficiency.
A workflow management system creates an at-ease campus environment; not only that, it also brings your institution into the future. Easy-to-navigate education processes attract students, allowing your campus to continue running like the well-oiled machine that it is. Keeping your campus in the dark ages of technology not only hurts your students, it hurts your entire business. A high-tech workflow management system is a necessity your school can no longer do without.
Whether fair or unfair, students expect a lot of of their colleges and universities. An individualized learning experience is the standard, but most students would settle for consistent help from their on-campus systems. Unfortunately, high enrollment rates, a limited amount of resources, an overworked staff, and a surplus of tasks to complete often leave students feeling confused and overlooked. The more difficulty students experience navigating their education process, the more impatient they become. If enough time passes, the decision to leave school altogether becomes an easy one.
They're not getting the help they need to prepare for their future, why would they stay?
Consistently negative experiences with student services are one of the primary sources of attrition among college students. When students don't get the help or services they need, they drop out of classes, refrain from attending courses, or even leave the school altogether. As an organization that seeks to prepare young adults for their future, the current attrition rates are unacceptable.
Thankfully, a workflow management system presents a wonderful solution. By simplifying student access to on-campus services, a workflow management system decreases frustration and confusion among the student body. With a system like the one from QLess, you can decrease attrition rates by as much as 50%. A workflow management system improves student satisfaction and increases retention rates by allowing each student to feel like their needs are being met.
While a workflow management system improves the lives of your students, it also leads to increased productivity of your staff. A higher education environment already deals with a lack of resources, but a larger problem presents itself in an ineffective use of the resources that do exist. Oftentimes, staff stretch themselves far too thin trying to meet the needs of all students, despite the lack of time or effective organization systems to do so. Advisors overbook themselves attempting to sort out class schedules, and the Registrar and Admissions offices are overrun with impatient students. While it's undeniably unfair to the students, it's equally as frustrating for the staff.
Workflow management systems streamline campus processes and effectively allocate your staff resources. By eliminating the need for physical lines and relying on technology-based systems for organization, workflow management systems allow your administrators to gain a clear view of the tasks they need to be completed. Instead of surprise assignments and a frustrating amount of work for staff members, each administrator focuses on their assigned tasks, increasing their overall productivity. Not only does it result in increased happiness for your employees, it also ensures that all your resources are used effectively, lowering operational costs and saving money in the long run.
In our technologically advanced world, physical lines and in-person wait times just aren't practical anymore. Many of the problems that develop in university settings stem from a general lack of organization. Without a workflow management system, students are forced to go to an office, wait in line, and generally waste their time in an attempt to progress in their college experience. At the same time, administrators have little control over the time and attention needed to help each individual student. With a finite amount of resources and an infinite amount of potential questions, administrators are unable to prioritize and organize accordingly. With that lack of organization, both staff and students waste their time, and neither leaves feeling happy.
A workflow management system sorts through the chaos in your offices and eliminates the inconveniences of poor organization. Instead of arriving at an unspecified time in a physical office, students are assigned an appointment time with which they can ask all their questions. Interactive virtual queuing simplifies the process if your student does need unexpected help, and mobile reminders ensure that each student arrives at their specified appointment time. Most importantly, all these processes are completed inside the system, without assistance from your staff, allowing them to save their abilities to actually help students and bypass the errors that often accompany in-person scheduling.
An effective workflow management system changes your on-campus life immediately. Improved allocation of resources, clear processes for students, and increased organization all lead to instantaneous changes in your business systems. However, workflow management systems also provide information on what needs to change in the future. As a completely automated process, workflow management systems collect valuable information on your student and staff patterns. Student wait times, staff efficiency, student needs--all these and more can be found within your workflow management system.
With QLess systems specifically, we provide a real-time dashboard that consolidates data from multiple offices. At a glance, you have a general idea of what's happening in all areas of your campus. In addition, surveys within the system provide even more information about student satisfaction and necessary changes. Improving your business is a constantly evolving process, workflow management systems provide valuable insights to ensure that you can provide the best resources to your students for years to come.
We don't need to tell you that colleges and universities need students to stay afloat. Enrollment and retention present a major challenge for higher education institutions. That explains why many student administrators list student retention and student experience as their top priorities. While students may drop out when dissatisfied with their education, the ripple effect extends much farther than a single loss. Unhappy students spread information online and within their communities about the ineffectiveness of the school, giving other individuals the message that your institution isn't worth attending. While an individual drop-out can already present a hefty loss, consistent dropouts can negatively affect your application and enrollment rates over time.
An effective workflow management system leads to increased student happiness and higher retention rates over time, but it also allows your students to talk positively about your institution. Not only are you saving money on attrition, you're also building a strong reputation that will draw more students to your school over time. Reputation matters, both for the present and for the future. Workflow management systems support your ability to meet your student's needs, building a strong reputation as an institution that cares. With a reputation like that, who wouldn't want to apply?
Workflow management systems are a necessity in the modern age. It increases the happiness of your students and staff, leading to higher productivity and increased retention rates. In addition, it organizes your office with little effort from your staff and provides valuable insights into how you can improve your processes in the future. If you're ready to build a strong reputation, meet your students' needs, and save money for your business, you need to take the QLess approach. Learn more about how our electronic queuing system can enhance your education systems today. Please contact us for more information about our system.
Waiting rooms have been an essential aspect of hospitals, doctor's offices, and other healthcare facilities. But it doesn’t take much thought to realize the idea is counterintuitive. Crowding individuals with ailments in congested areas while they wait for assistance is not ideal. This was only further emphasized as a person-to-person airborne pandemic struck the world. Patient queue management software can be the solution to remedy this.This experience caused many healthcare professionals to have to re-evaluate their waiting procedures. There were concerns about pandemic transmission in waiting rooms and the overall healthcare experience. Amid virus anxiety, would patients sit with others even with a mask on?For a while, there were no true means of eliminating the waiting room. But in recent years, to address these concerns, many healthcare providers have been implementing patient queue software like QLess. This software aims to help reduce patients’ anxiety and create a waiting room experience that meets customers' expectations. The healthcare industry is crowded, and consumers abandon providers that can't meet their needs. According to Medical Economics, 69% of patients would switch providers for better services. Patient queue management software is an impactful solution that can de-congest waiting rooms and provide a safer, more patient-friendly experience. In a time where consumers easily switch businesses, the patient experience is vital. Below, we will break down what patient queue management is, how a virtual queue management system creates safer spaces, and why this is so important for patients and healthcare organizations.
Before we go any further, it is important to fully understand what patient queue management software is. The idea is relatively straightforward, and it has changed the healthcare sector. Why not have a virtual waiting room to manage customer flow instead of a physical one? Patients can access this virtual waiting room from their phones, computers, or on-site kiosks.With key features that enable customers to track the actual wait times for appointments, monitor the progress of the line they’re in, and communicate with staff, patients have a drastically changed experience when using healthcare services. Some organizations still hesitate to embrace and implement digital technology into the patient experience. But data indicates that customers already rely on digital technology and expect organizations to accommodate that reliance. According to a poll from Healthfully, 80% of consumers want the ability to use technology to manage their healthcare experience. Furthermore, the average consumer uses tech constantly throughout their daily lives. The average U.S. adult spends more than seven hours a day on screens, according to Exploding Topics. Healthcare organizations should prioritize implementing helpful tech solutions like patient queue management to avoid customer alienation. Patient queue management software has substantial benefits that enterprises should not overlook. With features that allow customers to enter virtual queues from their phones, patients can remotely wait in the virtual waiting room and monitor their queue times. Implementing virtual queues doesn't mean healthcare organizations need to eliminate waiting rooms. It simply gives patients the ability to choose.
The million-dollar question that healthcare organizations might have is whether or not waiting rooms are such a bad thing. Waiting rooms were the only option for healthcare services before technology advanced enough to make them less necessary. So how bad could it be? By implementing software to eliminate waiting rooms, might healthcare organizations solve a problem that doesn’t exist? The answer to this question is a firm no. Waiting rooms pose a genuine risk to older patients' well-being. A 2012 study of elderly residents of long-term care facilities published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal showed that a visit to an emergency department is associated with more than a threefold increased risk of acute infection. While this vindicates the need for patient queue software, it is also common sense. Requiring sick and injured people to share a room for extended periods increases patient risk. The pandemic highlighted that the prior waiting room model is untenable during an airborne virus outbreak among those visiting emergency rooms and doctors' offices. Healthcare providers adapted by spacing chairs, having customers wait outside, and mandating masks. While they may have curbed the virus from spreading, they reduced operational efficiency and didn't enhance patient satisfaction. It is not insignificant that waiting rooms also have extremely long patient wait times. The longer customers are cramped in a waiting area, even if socially distanced, the more at-risk they are. Similarly, the more unhappy they will be. This is why it is incredibly important for enterprises to be very conscious of the state of their waiting rooms.
We’ve established that waiting rooms might inadvertently put customers at risk, but what do your patients think of them? Customer satisfaction is vital in healthcare, as it's still a business, and unhappy customers can easily switch providers. The waiting room is a defining step in the patient's journey before receiving service. So it is worth asking if increasing patient satisfaction in the waiting room experience is necessary or if customers are okay with the current status quo. Data shows that consumers distrust crowded waiting rooms and dislike the experience they provide. A QLess survey of 250 U.S. adults showed that 59.4% of consumers associate congested waiting areas with unsafe conditions. If customers feel unsafe in the waiting room, chances are they will not enjoy their overall experience. A contributing factor in this situation is that the average waiting room is just not a pleasant place to be. Typical healthcare waiting rooms present sterile environments with white walls, fluorescent lighting, outdated magazines, and a T.V. This is hardly a positive environment, and according to Fierce Healthcare, unpleasant waiting rooms are a bigger issue for customers than long wait times. Rather than investing in more comfortable chairs or a higher-definition television, enterprises should focus on the real problem. Customers just don’t like waiting rooms either way. Patients prefer waiting from home or nearby cafes to congested waiting areas. Giving the consumer the option to skip the waiting room altogether is the best solution to a longstanding problem.
The healthcare industry is about more than just improving patients’ well-being, although that is the primary objective. The modern consumer isn’t satisfied with just receiving excellent quality of care. The experience for patients along the way is not nearly as important. Healthcare organizations that want to survive in this new age of experience-centric care will do well to improve their waiting room. According to Forbes, 60% of Americans have had a negative healthcare experience in the past year, and 52% of those people will tell others about their negative experiences. Curating a positive waiting experience without risk and discomfort is important in building a patient-friendly healthcare organization. This will help create loyal customers and position healthcare companies to succeed.
It is clear that there is a need for change in the waiting room experience. Customers don’t feel safe, and there is an established correlation between emergency waiting room visits and further infections. The problem has only gotten worse in recent years. A 2022 study by Yale showed that emergency room crowds had reached crisis levels and posed significant patient safety risks. The same is true across Canada. The crowding is due to an overstressed system, not necessarily management failure. De-congesting the waiting room is incredibly important for both safety and satisfaction. Let’s explore how patient queue management software can lead to less crowded waiting rooms while providing efficient patient flow.
The primary feature that QLess offers that is designed to help de-crowd the waiting room is its remote check-in software. In a typical waiting room without a patient queue management solution, individuals have to check-in in person. They arrive at the front desk, inform staff they’ve arrived, fill in a form, and take a seat, waiting to hear their name called. This requires physical presence throughout the waiting process. Remote check-in software lets customers wait for their appointment without physically arriving until it begins. How this works is that customers will receive a link when they register for an appointment. They can access this link via mobile devices, computers, or an on-site kiosk. When their appointment is scheduled, they can tap the link and check in. Once they’ve checked into their appointment, the patient is automatically placed in a virtual queue. The queue displays the number of customers ahead and the projected wait time based on data tracking and machine learning, accounting for the line's size and wait times at different parts of the day. Customers can be queued based on appointment type or healthcare professional they're meeting. They can track their progress through an app or website and know when to be there. This means lines can move smoothly without customers needing to be in the waiting room until the end. This also lines up with what customers prefer. In a QLess survey of 250 consumers, 57.2% of respondents indicated they are likelier to patronize a business if they have early insights into wait times. QLess virtual queuing system's remote check-in feature eliminates the need for customers to enter waiting rooms until their appointment begins. They can choose whether they are comfortable in that environment and wait on their own terms.
Long wait times in healthcare have been a persistent issue and seem unavoidable due to the nature of the industry. Demand often exceeds the ability of facilities to provide efficient service due to the need for proper care and attention for each patient. This is why patients wait an average of over 18 minutes at physicians’ offices, according to PartnerMD, and 145 minutes at the average emergency room, according to Autoinsurance.org. Patient queue management software can’t entirely solve the issue of long waits that are endemic to the healthcare industry. However, it can provide organizations with a tool to increase staff productivity, manage customer flow, and improve overall efficiency, positively impacting wait times.
There are two key ways this software helps with this. Firstly, the patient queue management system completely automates the queue process, so enterprises don’t need to oversee it themselves. The software has configurable policies, like no walk-ins or a maximum 5-minute late policy for appointments. Then, the lineup can be completely automated, with the artificial intelligence-based system drastically more efficient and organized than a standard physical queue. QLess’s patient queue management software also has smart calendar features that give staff a better sense of their day. The entire appointment calendar is displayed for them, showing the customer, appointment type, and more. The calendar is color-coded and organized and can be segmented, so employees have a heightened understanding of their daily workflow, increasing overall efficiency. By reducing wait times, healthcare organizations can reduce the time people need to spend waiting for appointments. The remote check-in features allow customers to wait from wherever they please, but inevitably there will still be some customers that prefer to wait for appointments in waiting rooms. With automated queue management and smart calendar features, the QLess patient queue management system ensures waiting times are trimmed, resulting in less crowded waiting areas.
Communication in the healthcare process is incredibly important. Customers strongly desire communication from end-to-end in the healthcare process, and having better communication can lead to safer waiting rooms. With better communication, enterprises can create safer waiting rooms in several ways. Having customers that indicate they might be contagious wait remotely will reduce infection risk, and enabling customers to message staff if they are running slightly behind but still keep their appointment will lead to fewer delays. While this type of communication could lead to a safer, less crowded waiting area, many enterprises are ill-equipped to offer this level of communication. Customers expect communication, particularly through digital methods. According to Forbes, 80% of consumers surveyed said they prefer to use digital communications with their healthcare providers, and 43% said they want to engage digitally with their healthcare providers before, after, and during their visits. But many enterprises lack the digital infrastructure to provide this level of communication that customers are hoping for, even if it can make customers happier and lead to safer waiting rooms. The QLess patient queue management system empowers healthcare organizations with bi-directional communication features that improve the connection between customers and staff. With the QLess features, organizations can drive a more communicative approach to healthcare. They can individually message customers and receive responses, schedule messages to entire groups of customers, and create automated messages triggered at different parts of the patient journey. Better communication means less confusion, as late customers or no-shows often trigger chain reactions that lead to extended delays. With better communication, there are fewer bottlenecks, which means lines move faster and waiting rooms are less crowded. This also improves the patient experience, as enterprises can answer patients' questions digitally during busy times when they might not have the time to respond face-to-face.
One of the most significant ways healthcare organizations have pivoted away from the standard waiting room model is by leaning into virtual healthcare. The pandemic made face-to-face appointments a near-impossibility at many practices, and to combat this, many organizations pivoted to virtual healthcare options like telehealth. Providing medical care virtually remains important even after the peak days of the pandemic. According to McKinsey, virtual healthcare remains hugely impactful, with 46% of consumers using telehealth now compared to 11% in 2019.Telehealth leads to less congested, safer waiting rooms for obvious reasons. With the option to schedule remote healthcare appointments, customers don’t need to visit healthcare offices at all. If customers have a mild but contagious illness, healthcare organizations can schedule virtual appointments to ensure they don’t spread their illness. Ultimately, the fewer in-person visits, the less crowded waiting rooms will be. But many organizations might buckle under the weight of managing an entire virtual calendar without the proper digital solution.
QLess has virtual service features that enable healthcare organizations to provide a positive patient experience remotely. QLess is integrated with Zoom and Microsoft Teams, two popular video meeting platforms, and enables organizations to put customers in mixed queues that accommodate in-person and remote patients. How this works for remote patients is they would schedule an appointment online and select a virtual appointment. They will then receive a QLess link and be placed into a virtual queue when they check in for their appointment. They will then be able to monitor their wait time, see who is in front of them, and receive a Zoom or Teams link when their appointment is ready to begin. Virtual appointments are a crucial part of the post-pandemic world. The QLess patient queue management platform enables enterprises to integrate remote patients into their virtual queues and digital calendar, creating a smooth appointment process and easier virtual appointment management.
The waiting room is a longstanding problem in the healthcare industry that most organizations have neglected to address. The concept of making ill or injured patients wait for long periods in a congested room is one that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, although there haven’t been other options for organizations until recently. Now that QLess for healthcare and other patient queue management systems exist, the need for waiting rooms has been drastically reduced. These digital solutions enable enterprises to create a virtual queue where customers don’t have to be physically present to wait in line or in the waiting room. The customer can check in, monitor their status in line, and communicate updates with staff, all from their phones or computers. This means they can wait outside the office, from their home, at a nearby park, or wherever else they’d prefer. Customers can still wait in waiting rooms if they want to, but QLess allows them to wait remotely, helping to drastically reduce congestion in healthcare offices. Reducing risk in the waiting experience should be an important objective for all healthcare organizations, and it resonates with customers. Consumers strongly dislike the typical waiting room process that has been the norm in healthcare for ages. With QLess’s queue software, healthcare businesses can meet the needs of the experience-oriented patient while creating a safer, more positive waiting process.
The QLess queue management system can help a business in so many ways, from alleviating long lines and wait times, to auto scheduling appointments, marketing promotions, boosting staff productivity, and delivering important analytics. Businesses in many different industries, like government, healthcare, logistics, and education, can use QLess to improve their daily operations by using customer satisfaction reports and features. The QLess app gives customers the freedom to wait anywhere.
The QLess system includes an app that can be used to let customers wait anywhere while they are in line for a service, or it can function as an auto scheduler for office appointments. There is no longer a need for managing queues with customer service, when used in businesses like DMVs, restaurants, or retail shops, customers can join the line queue remotely before they even set foot in the business.
Using their mobile phone, the company's website, or a kiosk inside the location, customers join a virtual queue. The app relays an alert through voice or text message letting them know their place in line and approximate wait time. Once they have joined the virtual queue, they are free to wait wherever they want to like outside, at nearby businesses, or in their car. As they move up in the queue, they are sent updated notifications, giving them new approximate wait times. Customers can also request more time if they need it. The QLess app will move them back further in the queue, instead of moving them all the way to the back of the line.
We don't have to fear stepping out of the line and losing our place ever again!
When the customer is next in line, the app will summon them to your place of business, and, when it is their turn, the app can give them specific directions to the exact teller or register they need to be at. While customers wait in the virtual line, the app can send notifications about your current sales and promotions. When they have completed their service or transaction, the app immediately sends them a customer satisfaction report which is recorded along with other pertinent data for representatives to review later.
When used as an appointment scheduler, for businesses such as doctors and dental offices, the QLess software can enable customers to make appointments without having to talk to an office representative. They receive updates and notifications to confirm they will make their appointment. Staff can directly communicate and manage queues with customer service. Walk-ins can be seamlessly integrated with current appointments through the FlexAppointments technology. Reports, transaction times and types, and other data helps these businesses raise reviews and optimize workflow as well.
Customer satisfaction surveys can be distributed and collected in different ways, through the mail, email, over the phone, by text message, etc. Most businesses prefer to use email to deliver their surveys. When you purchase something online, you always give them your email address so they can send you a confirmation email and maybe update you with shipping information. Online businesses will almost always email you a customer satisfaction survey for reporting back to their marketing or development teams. Once you receive your item, they email you the survey within a day or two. The same happens for other businesses providing a service when they collect your email address, you will likely receive marketing emails from them in the future as well.
Research has shown the more time that passes between when a customer's service has been completed and when they receive the survey, the less likely they are to fill out the survey. Also, short surveys have been proven more effective than lengthy ones. The QLess app sends out a short customer satisfaction survey as soon as their service has been completed or they have purchased the goods they want. An immediate delivery to their mobile device will improve the quality of your customer satisfaction reports and the quantity of surveys that your receive back.
Reports help your better understand your customers. From an owner's standpoint, you may think your employees are top notch and doing a spectacular job. It can be hard to assess what goes on with customers when you don't have a constant eye on employees. Customer satisfaction reports let you see your employees through your customers' eyes. Even though you may have a service everyone wants and a great looking website, if you have bad customer service, people will spread the word or leave bad online reviews about your business. When your reputation is damaged from reviews, it can be hard to bounce back.
You can use your app to do more than managing queues. Customer service is important to your business and adding tracking to your procedures gives employees incentives to improve how they interact with customers. The reports combined with strategies and good managerial practices will help improve the quality of your services.
To have a profitable business, you need products that people want to buy or quality services that customers will want again and recommend to others. With customer satisfaction reports, you can find out what people want to purchase. Perhaps they were looking for specific items at your business and couldn't find them in stock. Now, you can stock up on those items, maybe your products had most of what they were looking for, but were lacking certain features. Use your product development team to brainstorm ideas and add more features. The reports can also help you find weak spots in your services that need improvement. Using the data, you can create plans to implement changes and optimize your operations.
Use your customer satisfaction reports to solve customer's problems and implement their suggestions. People love to see that their suggested comments actually had an impact. Once you have solved their problems or implemented a change, reach out to them and let them know that you appreciate their comments and advice.
Customers will feel empowered to tell others about your company and that you listen to people. Word of mouth marketing is a very important part of building a reputable company. When customers create a chain by recommending services to others, you create repeat customers and brand ambassadors who build your reputation.
With the data you receive from your QLess customer satisfaction reports, you can start making changes to your business operations, products, or services.
Most industries rely on lines and many industries fall short when making lines shorter for their clients. Imagine a time when you can join a queue at the DMV from your home and arrive there when it is 15 min from your service time. Need to replace a birth certificate at a government office but the wait is long? No problem! Grab something to eat nearby while you wait. Imagine never having to wait in a queue line at a theme park; instead, customers can shop, walk, dine, and enjoy their other attractions, they'll be driven to businesses that employ the QLess queue management system because they love it. Be the first in your area to draw in the customers with it.
The QLess queue managing app improves customer service, alleviates long wait times, and automatically schedules appointments, while raising customer and employee satisfaction. By collecting customer satisfaction reports, data, and analytics about your business, the QLess queue management system is an invaluable tool to help you improve your company and increase its profits.
QLess is a new technology that is going to change the way people view waiting in line. Discover how your business can benefit from the features of the QLess system by contacting us today for a free demo. Quell the queue for good with our revolutionary queue management system.
The customer journey is meant to be smooth and friction-free. In an ideal world, customers will enter your store or office, acquire the needed product or service, pay, and leave happy. The reality of the typical customer experience doesn't always reflect this ideal situation; for instance, there are often bottlenecks that impact the journey, causing customer frustration and negatively impacting efficiency, one of these core bottlenecks is a long wait. Long waits are something nearly every customer dislikes, walking into a crowded waiting room or a long line and slowly counting the minutes as the line moves forward is an objectively unenjoyable experience. According to a QLess survey of 250 US adults aged 25+, "60.5% of customers have left a business because of a long queue, and either gone elsewhere or never returned. 69% of customers would patronize a competitor if they knew it had shorter waits." Customers are impatient about waits, and while businesses try to improve their waiting rooms with magazines or better chairs, this solution might not have the results they hope.
There is more to the waiting experience that agitates the average customer, and businesses should consider implementing solutions with a more significant impact. One of the ways an enterprise can combat the poor customer experience caused by long waits is by implementing a phone queue system. These are virtual queues that customers can check into on their phones to eliminate the need for in-person waits. QLess is a phone queue system with a wide range of features that are intended to transform the customer journey, creating a seamless, more transparent, and enjoyable process. With usage in industries ranging from government offices to retail, this phone queue system can change the line experience forever. Before diving into their impact on the customer journey, let's look at how phone queue systems work.
Phone queue systems are easy-to-use for customers and don't require much work to implement for businesses. They are a straightforward solution to the problem of long queues and difficult in-person physical waits; essentially, how it works is that customers can enter lines with the tap of a button. Using the QLess queue management software, your customer will tap to check into a line or appointment and virtually be entered into the line. They can monitor the wait time through their phone and keep track of the line as it moves; then, when their appointment is set to begin, they can enter and receive service. A phone queue system improves businesses' customer flow by organizing their lines for them.
The QLess line management system manages the line according to the appointment time, appointment type, and the employee servicing the appointment. It can also blend that line with walk-ins, automating the lineup according to pre-set preferences ensuring that everything moves smoothly for businesses and customers, with a seamless flow that doesn't require the same level of oversight from staff. This customer journey management solution works through the phone, as customers can check in and out of lines, message staff, and monitor wait times through an app or website. The QLess software has been found to reduce wait times by up to 97% and boost staff productivity by up to 90%, the calendar management features and line automation combine to make frontline staff's jobs easier and the wait for customers significantly faster. The benefits of a phone queue system are significant, impacting several core areas of an enterprise. Let's delve into how these flexible solutions manage to transform the customer journey for the better.
There are many things that the average consumer is looking for. In today's world, where ease of access is a priority, one of the most essential things is convenience. Customers don't want to shop with businesses that inconvenience them, and they respect nearly every product or service they purchase to be easily accessible. According to Smart Insights, "97% of customers have abandoned a purchase because it wasn't convenient for them." A Nasdaq survey showed that "83% of consumers believe convenience is more important now than it was five years ago." In a time where convenience is one of the most critical benchmarks consumers measure enterprises with, queuing systems can help businesses stand out, customers that use the QLess phone queue system have the freedom to wait for appointments or in lines from wherever they choose. Rather than standing in a physical queue or sitting in a waiting room, customers can join a line with their phone, monitor the wait time, and enter the physical premises only when it is time for their appointment giving them a more relaxed and individually tailored waiting experience.
Improving this aspect of the customer experience is incredibly important for businesses. Long waits are a big impediment to customer satisfaction and one of the most common customer complaints in many industries, according to Synqera, "73% of customers say waiting in checkout lines is their least favorite part of in-store shopping." Addressing the difficulty of physical queues will help businesses overcome this common cause of dissatisfaction and lead to happier customers. The happier your customers are, the lower your churn rate will be, and while no business has a perfect customer satisfaction record, addressing the issues you can will go a long way, physical waits are something the average customer has little patience for and are altogether avoidable. By implementing QLess, you can create a waiting experience that gives consumers back their independence and ensures happier customers.
Any solution implemented by a business should align with the preferences of its target market, for most enterprises, the most critical current demographic to target is Gen Z and millennials. This collective group ranges in age from 10-40, making up the 18-34 demographic that most businesses covet. To connect with this age group, you must cater their shopping experience to their established habits. For many companies, this will mean implementing mobile as a component of their customer service offerings. Millennials and Gen Z are both extremely online generations and very smartphone savvy, according to Review42, "98% of the Gen Z population owns a smartphone." Just behind them in this regard are millennials, as "93% of this generation owns a smartphone," according to the Pew Research Center. By adding smartphone-based solutions to your business, you won't be isolating many members of this generation; instead, you will be aligning with their established preference for mobile in the shopping experience.
Gen Z is particularly pronounced in their preference for merging digital and physical shopping channels. Bluestone PIM notes that "48% of them expect to be able to buy online and return an item in-store, and 33% expect to be able to buy online and pick up in-store." For younger generations, digital technology plays a significant role in how they shop, and they expect brands to be able to accommodate that, this isn't just true in retail, it is shown in many industries. QLess helps enterprises adapt to the mobile preferences of their consumers with a phone queue system that can be accessed through an app or mobile-optimized website. Mobile queue management systems help businesses create an omnichannel experience for their customers, where they interact with your business physically and digitally. With Gen Z and millennials now aged into the most important demographic for businesses across industries, meeting the mobile needs of consumers is more important than ever before.
Not everyone entering your business will have a perfect experience, no matter what you do. Individual customers have different expectations and preferences, and meeting all these varying needs can be difficult; similarly, there are a lot of different customer experience strategies an enterprise can implement what may help them improve, but one of the best is simply asking your customers what they think. Customer feedback is incredibly important, and the QLess digital queue management system has features that enable businesses to collect and store these insights. The QLess customer feedback solution allows enterprises to send a pulse survey via automated text after customers purchase or receive a service. They can automate this, so it happens automatically and draft different questions or simply request a review, QLess will then store that information in the database, and businesses can look through them to find important insights. The benefits of receiving subjective information from your customers are significant, this form of customer engagement allows you to learn more about your performance relative to customer expectations.
Understanding the areas of your business where your customers may find you are falling short of expectations and the areas where you are performing well will allow businesses to implement important changes. If you are seeing a significant number of reviews stating that the customer service wasn't up to par or that there was a significant degree of confusion around a certain part of the experience, this is an important step to improving that; ultimately, the goal of every enterprise is to provide a service that has the customer leaving happy. A happy customer is a loyal customer, and that requires businesses to be attentive to what their customers think of their experience. QLess gives businesses the tools they need to collect important insights from their customers that will give them a clear picture of how they are performing. This will enable them to implement customer experience solutions that have better results.
Hearing firsthand from your customers is incredibly important. It gives enterprises a clear picture of how the people they are trying to satisfy feel about their service, but while subjective data is important, it is imperfect. Most of the time, customer feedback comes from both ends of the extreme spectrum: customers who have had a good or bad experience which provides crucial information, but obtaining objective information is just as important. This comes in the form of data or business intelligence, data paints businesses a picture of their processes that is unbiased and unopinionated. Armed with high-quality data, businesses can break down how they perform in several crucial areas and use that information to create a more seamless customer experience. According to Data Ideology, "Data-driven businesses are 23x more likely to acquire new customers and 6x likelier to retain them." Data is a driver of business success, but one of the issues many businesses struggle with is acquiring accurate data on things like their line experience.
QLess helps enterprises gain high-value insights into their services by offering business intelligence features. Since customers use the mobile customer journey management software to schedule and check into appointments, QLess can collect data covering several important topics. QLess records the average wait time, the number of customers served in a day, the appointment no-show percentage, and more, this information is reported to companies in graphs and charts that easily illustrate deviations and key takeaways. It can also be segmented, so businesses can filter the information according to criteria like the day of the week, time of day, appointment type, and more.There's a lot businesses can do with this information, they can notice areas where they might be falling short of customer expectations, like certain appointment types that have longer waits than others or times of day when they might be overwhelmed. They can then make the necessary adjustments to provide better quality service at all times of day for every appointment type. It is a tool that helps connect a leadership team to highly valuable, objective, and actionable insights.
Customers have a lot to say. Whether they've had a positive or poor experience or want to get in touch with a staff member, customers want their voices heard. Shopping at a store or going to a doctor's office shouldn't make customers feel like just a number to a business. It should be a personalized experience, where they feel their opinions matter and staff is accessible. Strong communication is how businesses can meet this need, which is something that businesses across industries often struggle with. It can be difficult to remain in constant contact with customers and hear out all their varying requests and complaints but armed with the right tools, businesses can provide stronger communication to their customers, benefiting all parties involved. QLess' phone queue system is complete with communication features that enable staff and customers to message back and forth, as well as mass messaging that makes communication scalable.
The bi-directional communication features allow customers to message staff regarding any questions or complaints. They can connect with staff while waiting in line, send additional details to make appointments a smoother process, and have their communication needs met. For businesses, they can send mass messages to entire lineups of people at once, provide important updates, and schedule SMS appointment reminders on the day of appointments. Better communication allows businesses to meet customer demands more efficiently and helps cut back on appointment no-shows which are a serious problem in industries across sectors. A customer interaction tool like QLess allows businesses to maintain better contact with customers to ensure they don't forget appointments. The mobile nature of QLess means customers are likelier to be more responsive and engaged, as they are much more likely to check texts than emails. Overall, enhanced communication leads to happier customers and a more effective enterprise.
The past several decades have started a major shift that businesses are now reckoning. The modern consumer is more empowered and mobile than ever, sparking a significant decline in brand loyalty. The pandemic expedited what was already an ongoing trend as brand loyalty dropped 16% amidst COVID-19. Now more than ever, businesses have to compete to earn customer loyalty, as the emphasis on convenience and saturation of options creates a more competitive marketplace. The importance of acquiring a customer is significant, but acquiring loyal customers might be more significant. Churn is a natural part of every business, but having a solid base of repeat, loyal customers is how businesses stay afloat and grow. According to SmallBizGenius, "Boosting retention by just 5% can increase profits by up to 25-95%." It is also less costly than trying to market to new customers.
A virtual queuing system gives businesses a powerful solution to increase customer retention and loyalty. It is an all-in-one customer service platform that makes the overall appointment experience painless from end to end. Your customers can use the virtual appointment scheduling software to book appointments anytime, including outside business hours, they can check into lines remotely without needing to wait in physical queues, and they can communicate back and forth with staff for improved transparency and communication. QLess makes receiving a product or service from a business drastically more convenient. Convenience is top of mind for most customers, and QLess ensures that the appointment process is smooth and friction-free, this will surely incentivize customer loyalty by removing some of the biggest roadblocks to a good customer experience. Long waits, difficulty with appointment scheduling, and unresponsive staff are three extremely common customer complaints. Removing these issues will lead to more repeat customers, a crucial thing in a highly-competitive market.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, most businesses were completely unprepared. It is hard to be able to handle something as unforeseen and unpredictable as a global pandemic. Most businesses saw losses mount and customers leave as they scrambled for answers, the enterprises that were able to bounce back fast could do so largely because they were agile and flexible. Being an agile business means responding quickly to changes and altering course effectively to navigate difficult situations, digitization is a big part of that. Digitization helps businesses move quickly to make necessary changes which was certainly the case with the pandemic when remote work became the norm and companies had to move their entire infrastructure online. For businesses looking to digitize to become more agile, a phone queue system like QLess can help significantly in this regard.
QLess has virtual services features designed to help businesses run a digital appointment calendar. It works very similarly to the virtual queue system for physical appointments. Customers schedule their appointments through the app and are sent a link through SMS when it is time for them to check-in. They can check in on their phones and monitor the wait time until their appointment is set to begin, then they are sent either a Microsoft Teams or Zoom link, which QLess is integrated with and they can then join the virtual appointment. These advanced features give businesses the tool they need to run a fully digital appointment system if necessary. They can also blend different appointment types in their virtual queue, so physical and virtual appointments in the same line, it is a system that empowers companies to manage their appointment calendar in various ways and gives customers a choice of different types of appointments. This contributes to making a company more agile and capable of adapting to whatever major changes come.
Conclusion
In almost every industry, from retail and healthcare to government and education, companies are doing everything possible to separate themselves in customers' minds. This is one of the reasons there has been such an emphasis placed on the customer experience giving customers an enjoyable and seamless experience is the best way to stand out and earn their loyalty. As long lines and physical queues are clear obstructions to a good experience, addressing this problem has become vital. A phone queue system is a solution that enables enterprises to eliminate the need for a physical queue. With just the tap of a button, customers can enter virtual lines, monitor the necessary wait, and join when it is time for their appointment. This mobile-friendly solution aligns with the tech-savvy consumer most businesses will be targeting and has numerous benefits that can improve the customer journey. Your customers want speed, convenience, and ease of access. With a phone queue system like QLess, you can accommodate this need. Shorter waits, no physical queues, and improved transparency and communication are all ingredients to a seamless and friction-free customer journey.
For many businesses, scheduling appointments is a large part of the staff's duties. Businesses like healthcare offices, dental offices, veterinarian offices, colleges, universities, government offices, and others are constantly making new appointments, rearranging appointments, and canceling appointments, all while trying to keep a back-to-back schedule without large gaps. Walk-ins, no-shows, and customers who are late to their appointments don't make this task any easier. When multiple staff members schedule appointments, mistakes can be made. When customers are made to wait even when they had an appointment, they can get irritable. Take the stress of scheduling appointments off your employees' list of duties with the QLess auto scheduler.
Customers Can Schedule Their Appointments Online
By using your company's website or an app on their mobile phone, your customers can complete scheduling their appointment without ever speaking to a staff member. Once they complete the line scheduling process, the QLess auto scheduler will send them timely notifications through text or voice messages on their mobile phone to confirm that they will make it to the appointment. This greatly reduces and discourages the occurrence of no-shows.
When customers are running late, they can request additional time through the auto scheduler app. They will be moved back in the line scheduling queue, instead of having to reschedule altogether. Your staff will have access to a real-time dashboard that shows all appointments, no-shows, additional time requests, and other pertinent data for managing the schedule. They can use the dashboard to send direct notifications to customers' mobile phones via a text or voice message, alerting them of line scheduling issues in a timely manner. When customers are informed, they can plan to arrive later and will be happy they aren't waiting, even though they had an appointment. Customers can literally wait anywhere while they are in line for service. They can wait in the waiting room as normal, outside, in their car, at local businesses, or anywhere. The app will summon them and give them any necessary directions to get to the right service desk when it is their turn.
In addition to being able to use the QLess auto scheduler to make their own appointments, business owners and employees can send alerts to customers about promotions they are currently offering. And, as soon as they have completed their service with your business, the auto scheduler app will send a custom satisfaction survey straight to their mobile device. Surveys that are sent sooner have a higher response rate. The more time that has passed after the service has been completed, the less likely the customer will be to complete it.
Existing Appointments Integrate with Walk-Ins
The QLess line scheduling app can also be used with a kiosk inside your place of operation. Kiosks help to grab the attention of walk-ins and assist them in finding a spot in line. No kiosk is necessary, though, for walk-ins to seamlessly integrate with existing appointments through the FlexAppointment software. With FlexAppointments, the app puts appointment holders first in any given time slot, ensuring they have first priority no matter how long the queue is. The auto scheduler is completely automated so your employees can relax and deal with individual customers as they arrive.
Cloud Technology
QLess auto scheduler software is 100% cloud-based technology. No hardware, local servers, or costly installation is needed. Updates are automatic and free. You will never have freeze times in your business due to lengthy software updates. And, the QLess software works on all standard web browsers used today. It's fast and easy to get the system up and running. The system itself is easy to learn and manage, and your employees will quickly be able to master its functions and features.
Notifications of Delays Reduce Frustration
Normally, when your office is running behind, customers show up for their scheduled appointments expecting to be served in a timely manner. While they wait, and wait, their frustration grows exponentially. They start to question the competency of your staff and the quality of your business. "I had an appointment, why have I been waiting for so long?", is what your patrons will wonder. Customers often have other things they need to get done in a day. As customers become dissatisfied, they may think about switching to another business for service, leave bad reviews online, or tell other potential customers not to visit your establishment.
Your staff will have the power to easily and quickly notify customers with upcoming appointments about delays in service. Customers can then use that knowledge to arrive later or rearrange their schedule for the rest of the day. Customers appreciate being kept 'in-the-know' and updated about things that will affect their service with you. When customers are happy and satisfied, they spread the word about the business to others, leave good reviews online, and keep coming back for more services. You can then use the QLess auto scheduler to convert new potential customers into repeat customers. Let's face it, bad online reviews can be detrimental and irreversible to a business's reputation. Good reviews grow your brand's trustworthiness in the community.
Powerful Data & Analytics
The QLess line scheduling app records data and analytics on your customers and relays it to you in easy to read graphs and reports that can be downloaded as Microsoft Excel, Access, and CSV file formats. Data on transaction types and times, customer preferences and experiences, walk-ins, walk-outs, and no-shows help you identify areas of the business that need optimization. Transaction times and types can help you address staff productivity issues and give them an incentive to improve their workflow. Customer survey information gives you important feedback on the services that you provide.
Boost Staff Productivity
While the QLess auto scheduler manages your appointments, employees are left with more time to tend to customers and other office duties. One less stressful duty means employees can focus harder on the things that will give your business a good reputation, like friendly, helpful, and in-depth customer service. Taking stress and dissatisfied customers out of the equation for your employees means your can increase employees' job satisfaction and help retain them as workers. Retaining quality workers is key to running a successful business.
Applications of the QLess Auto Scheduler
Colleges and Universities
Colleges and universities have certain times of the year when many appointments for a large student body need to be managed. Students need to schedule appointments with student advisors, financial advisors, authorities for presenting portfolios for admissions applications, counselors, and other people who will help them navigate the college experience.
The number of incoming and current students that need these services to reach their end goal, a degree, can be overwhelming. There is not always enough staff availability to satisfy everyone's needs. College employees can get stressed and students can inadvertently get swept under the rug. When students feel frustrated from classes and a lack of help to navigate the system, they are more likely to drop out. When students wait less and are kept in the loop, they are happier and can use their wait time for studies, meal breaks, or relaxing.
Healthcare Offices
Doctor's offices, hospitals, physical therapy offices, veterinarians, dental offices, and other healthcare businesses can benefit greatly from the QLess auto scheduler. When customers have the power to wait wherever they want to, they no longer have to be confined to your waiting room. Many people prefer not to wait in rooms where other potentially ill patients are also waiting. The line scheduling app can help keep sick patients from spreading disease and sickness to other people they come in contact with in your office. This makes for happy patients and employees.
Government Offices
Appointments for welfare, medicaid, medicare, and other government services can still result in long wait times and dissatisfied customers. Reduce gaps in service and keep staff members from needing to wait for the next appointment. While many government workers are used to dealing with irate individuals, wouldn't it be nice to create more satisfaction on the whole for both citizens and your employees? Change the way people view waiting for appointments with the QLess auto scheduler.
The QLess line scheduling app can also be used to quell queues in other businesses like theme parks, retail stores, DMVs, call centers, logistics, and many other industries. Empower your customers to wait anywhere they please while getting timely updates about their wait time and place in line. Boost your employees' productivity, get valuable insights into your customers' experiences, reduce walk-outs and no-shows, and improve business reviews with our auto scheduler.
You can also read our success stories where the QLess auto scheduler has improved businesses and helped propel them into the future with our new technology. Stop scheduling in the dark ages and get with the times! Contact QLess today to request a free business demo.
In the business world, the value of customer service is exceptionally high. It's a commodity that directly impacts the bottom line of every company. Normally we don't tend to think of higher education institutions as businesses. However, as universities have to deal with decreased revenues, increased enrollment, and the ever-evolving demands of the student population, it's vital that the value of customer experience management tools be examined further.
Universities and colleges need to put a renewed focus on meeting and ideally exceeding the expectations as well as the needs of their customers, which more often than not are their students. Students are seeking out educational opportunities in outlets that meet their customer service needs.
What does customer experience management look like in a traditional higher education environment? By taking customer-service principles and infusing them into academia, schools are able to get scaleable results from making small but important changes.
Customer Service In Higher Education
Customer service is a group of activities created to enhance the level of a customer's satisfaction; specifically, the feeling surrounding a product, service, or action that has met the customer's expectations. Customer service is being utilized in most educational institutions; further, there are specific departments that are often created and solely dedicated to providing services for students.
However, for a more authentic customer service experience, it's vital that all departments are involved in making sure that the customer/student has a positive experience and interaction in all their endeavors on campus, and providing a true environment where service is respected is everyone's responsibility. While it may be argued that higher education has not focused enough on customer and student service and satisfaction, there is a strong tide of change in that department.
Tools Can Make A Difference
With customer experience management tools such as queue management technology, schools can re-engage with their student population in a clearer, more organized way that serves both the students and the faculty simultaneously. Campus life has changed so drastically over the past 10+years. Whether it's the way students register for classes, wait in line for food or tickets to an on-campus event, or apply for financial assistance, there are so many ways that students now have to know how to navigate the school campus. Developing easier and more efficient ways to do these things then becomes the next logical step.
With so many stressors contributing to the college experience, the last thing that students want to get stuck doing is waiting in line. With customer experience management tools, these stressors can be significantly diminished.
Aids For Administrators Means Better Student Experiences
The value of queue management technology is changing the way both students and administrators work and handle student inquiries of all kinds.
School administrators want the educational process to be a seamless and smooth experience for their students. This then allows the staff to do their jobs more efficiently, thereby creating a happier, more sustainable work-life and workforce.
Change The Way Students Register
Every semester brings a wave of new students and returning students who must register for classes. This can be an overwhelming task, especially when hundreds of other students are clamoring for the same classes. With the proper implementation of queue management software, students are more likely to get treated fairly and get selected for courses based on their place in a queue, rather than having to wait in an unending line of people with no real solution in sight.
Once students put their name and information in a queue, they are then free to move on about their day until their name comes up to receive either customer service or the services themselves. This type of queue management is a perfect example of customer experience management tools that can benefit both the customer and the university; in addition, with queue management, they can quickly and easily access other similar courses and register for the classes they want.
Without having to commit to the physical space of waiting in line, they can refocus their energies on other pressing tasks at hand. They can also be notified via telephone registration, text message, or email.
Admissions Ease
The admissions office is another area where colleges can benefit from customer experience management tools. This is due to the transformation that occurs when new queue management is implemented. Admission is a vital part of the college campus experience and is also vital to the movement of new and existing students into the university system. It's also where many students will head to when they have questions regarding admissions, transcripts, and more. When a large number of students arrive simultaneously, it can be a stressful for all those involved; however, when employees are able to access the queue software, they are more easily able to help those needing assistance with registration, minimize the amount of confusion in the physical space of the admissions office, and make the process for students smoother overall. When staff is equipped with tablets to showcase those needing help or appointments, they can easily check the status of the queue and provide any additional information needed. This customer experience management tool is one that benefits not only the students but the staff as well.
Transportation Benefits
Queue management software also comes in handy in the transportation department of a university. With on-campus or local, campus-only busses, students can more easily determine when their busses will depart and arrive and from what locations. Having access to this accurate information is critical as so many students and staff use buses for commuting to and around the campus.
Hospitals Benefit
Medical facilities are a major part of many university campuses. These facilities may range in size and also may serve not only the college community but the larger community as well. When aiming to improve customer experience management, one of the best ways to do that is by improving people's ability to connect with patient services.
With software to better connect patients, it can make the customer experience substantially better in areas such as patient appointments, scheduling, rescheduling, obtaining test results, or communicating with doctors and staff.
With thousands of patients desiring access to their medical information daily, queue management can also help students and patients make sense of an often confusing system. As always, when the patients and customers get better care and feel more satisfied with the service they receive, it allows those working for them a great sense of satisfaction as well. With it comes a greater ability to do one's job. This keeps the process flowing and a positive feedback loop arises when all parties are having a positive experience.
Mobile Queueing
In today's world, and on college campuses more than ever, students live hand-in-hand with their mobile devices. Never without their mobile and cellular technology, they are connected online virtually most of the time. When it comes to customer experience management, there are numerous ways to reach out and stay connected to those customers who have mobile accessibility. Whether it's for commerce, academic purposes, statistical analysis, or data collection, mobile queueing can be a powerful tool to connect with customers; for example, after students have registered for a class, students can be quickly notified of their spot via SMS messaging. Or when needing to access school transcripts from administrative offices, a customer can reach out to admissions via a mobile queue and more easily connect with staff.
The need to stand in line is no longer the only way to get your questions answered, and with this form of stress-free communication helps to further foster and promote a positive customer/administrator relationship. This goodwill is an asset to both current students as well as those who are in the process of applying or considering applying to the university, and further, for those who are considering to do business with the university outside of academic purposes as well.
More ways customer experience management tools can help a college campus environment include:
Test Centers
At any given time on a college campus, there can be numerous tests being given in any number of fields. Finding ways to keep track of applicants, register them, and make sure that they all receive the proper information is vital. With a queue management system, universities can greatly reduce the headaches and frustrations related to this in just a few simple steps. With such a stressful component of the college experience on the line, having a more organized approach greatly alleviates unneeded stress in all those affected by the process.
Libraries And Computer Labs
Library study rooms and computer labs are a great resource for students needing to study and also obtain access to library materials; however, there are often only a limited number of them available at any given time, so organizing how and when students gain access to them is important, but with proper customer management tools such as digital queueing, students can rely on a fair and unbiased way to gain access to the study rooms and labs. With proper scheduling, more students are able to access the space and get work done in the allocated time.
As technology continues to evolve, so does the opportunity to improve customer management tools and the way that businesses collaborate and integrate them into their business model to improve the customer experience. To find out more about queue management software and its benefits on the college campus, check out QLess today!
There are numerous ways to improve customer interaction on campus. And with innovative queue technology, many of those ways can help the flow of students, teachers, and staff to run as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
Today's educational facilities are under even more demand than ever. Making sure there are adequate courses, teachers, and resources available to the staff and student population can be a daunting and challenging task. When there are a limited number of hours in the day and an exceedingly high number of items, meetings, or tasks that need to be accomplished, having a streamlined mode of getting things done is ideal.
With customer interaction constantly in demand, queue technology can help to bridge the gap and lessen the wait times, stress, and personal strain that comes with waiting in a line.
Read on to discover the different ways to improve customer interaction on campus with innovative queue technology.
1. Financial Aid
Improve communications, access, and solutions to problems in the office where so much business occurs. One of the more challenging parts of attending university or any form of education can come from the challenge of gaining access to not only the money it takes to attend the school but also the navigation of the complex stream of paperwork, applications, technical, and legal questions that arise. When students finally do obtain financial aid, there will also be a slew of questions, requirements, and additional information they will need to provide.
With queue technology, those questions can be more easily accessed and answered. Alleviating both the stress of the application process as well as the myriad of requirements can give peace of mind to students, and help with the stress of the situation. When the environment is less stressful on both the students as well as the staff, it makes everyone a lot happier. Queue management helps manage all aspects of communication with the financial officers who are there to answer questions and authorize the disbursement of funds to the students.
2. Admissions
Admissions is an area that is visited by both newly enrolling students and current students as well. It can be an overwhelming experience when first entering college, especially when the campus and population are large. It is a vital part of the campus ecosystem where students can feel they can ask questions about a wide range of topics that have to do with their studies and their life on campus. With hundreds and often thousands of students looking to get their questions answered quickly, time in the Admissions office can get bogged down at a moment's notice. So customer interaction can be at an all-time high.
Instead of having hundreds of students clamoring to have their questions answered, staff can instead work off of a queue management system that allows them to keep an organized account of all students who are waiting to be seen. With the ability to post wait times and queue spots on public television screens, those waiting in person can see where they fall in the queue. Or better yet, students can leave the physical location and get notified when their time is up in the line. They can be notified via SMS, phone call, or email. This helps to save everyone's time and energy and reduces stress overall in both the workplace as well as in the scheduling of the students.
3. Hospitals And Other Public Services
Many universities have medical facilities that offer services to not only students but also to the community as well. The benefits of queue technology can be seen in customer interaction in both waiting for visits with medical practitioners, scheduling, canceling, or rescheduling appointments, or inquiring about help with bills, medical records, and more. When customers, both student and non-student, visit these facilities, they are able to more easily gain the information they need. And with medical care, the easier the administrative side is, the better. Patients have easier access to the care they need, and this respect for the patient is absolutely invaluable.
For employees as well, knowing that they are able to better and more efficiently do their job allows them peace of mind. When people's health is on the line, everyone wants to do their best so that their patients can ultimately feel their best.
4. Easy To Use Technology
Students and staff can learn about the benefits of queue management systems with little training. The software was created to be extremely user-friendly, easy to operate, and easy to learn. For institutions that hire and educate large numbers of people from all over the world, it becomes especially important that their software is universal and easy to understand. The best software is only as successful as when the most technologically challenged person can find ease in using it. Having a quick and fluid interface is key and helps all users get to the information they need quickly and with ease.
5. Fairness In Action
Another way that queue technology helps improve customer interaction on campus is that the software is designed to process the information more fairly. For example, in a classroom solely dedicated to computer study, there are a finite number of computers that are available at any given time. With many students wanting access to computers, the reasonable and fair way to access them is through queue management. By utilizing a mobile queue, the teacher is then able to help the students sign up in the fair and appropriate order. In addition, the software makes it easier to direct students to the correct staff person who can help them with their needs.
There are so many aspects of the queue technology that are helpful to communications, having access to it, truly can improve your customer relationship no matter where you are. This more organized flow helps ease any potential tension that arises during prolonged wait times. And most importantly, students and employees are able to make the most of their days, no matter what the situation.
6. Improving The Campus Experience
When students and staff are better organized and are able to make better use of their time, it allows them to get the proper help they need in a more rapid time frame. This benefit further helps students focus on their studies and their ever-changing and ever-challenging education.
Conversely, when the staff is more easily able to serve the needs of the student population, they gain a sense of satisfaction and job enjoyment from every customer interaction. By spending less time bogged down in a web of mismatched scheduling and missed appointments, and more time educating, advising, and working with individual students, the whole system is able to run more smoothly. And as always, when resources are finite, getting golden moments with a university professor, administrator, or staff member can make the difference between a student getting their needs met and feeling hopelessly lost within a giant system. This is once again a great example of how customer interactions can be vastly improved with queue management technology.
If you're looking for ways to improve your customer interaction and client experience, consider QLess for all your queue management needs. They are constantly developing innovative new ways to save people time, energy, resources, and money. With the proper queue management technology, your business or university can also reap the benefits of this incredible software.
Start making the most of your time, in and out of line. Realize that your time has more value than you give it, and when you finally start to free up that precious time, you'll begin to realize how much of it you were wasting every single day! Learn more about queue management technology at QLess today!
Christmas is just around the corner and retail brick-and-mortar businesses everywhere are preparing; in fact, many stores start decorating and stocking Christmas-themed items the day after Halloween, and if you haven't planned out your Black Friday and Christmas sales, you better get a roll on it now. People are making their lists and researching the products they want to buy online before they venture out to shop at local malls and businesses. Your employees are looking forward to, or dreading, the day you switch the store music to the Christmas station, and you're likely preparing for extra-long Christmas shopping lines at your store.
Holiday Shopping In Years' Past
Shopping during the holidays is typically predictable and doesn't vary much from year to year. Early in the holiday season, you have the smart and timely shoppers who buy early and beat the late-season crowds. Christmas shopping lines are pretty manageable during this time and employees are easy going, but when Black Friday hits, the attitude changes for most retail locations. Your business may be familiar with lines that form in the wee hours of the morning on Black Friday and stretch around the building.
You and your employees cower in fear behind shelves and register stations from the zombie-like faces fogging up the front doors with their hot breath. Like wild predators, they stare through the windows waiting for any sign of movement, listening for the jingle of keys that will release them inside. You prepare to be trampled as the doors are finally opened and crowds of people push and shove past each other to get to the goods.
That might be an exaggeration, but you know the scene, Black Friday is a chaotic time when Christmas shopping lines are outrageous.
Your face may light up like it's Christmas morning when you see shoppers flooding your store, but how do the customers feel about their shopping experience? Some people avoid leaving the house on Black Friday, but others live for the thrill of the hunt for good deals. Even though many Black Friday deals can be found online and we now have Cyber Monday for even more deals online, surveys show that most people still enjoy Black Friday shopping in brick and mortar stores. There's just something satisfying about handling things and trying on clothing before you commit to buying it. Instant gratification is a plus too, the only negative is the Christmas shopping lines.
Think back to the last time you were out shopping on Black Friday or the week before Christmas. It can be difficult to navigate through aisles and Christmas shopping lines are long and slow. For many people, it can be enough to make them drop their items on any shelf and walk right out. Everybody hates to wait. With so many customers, employees get worn down, exhausted, and can be grumpy to customers from all of the hustle and bustle. Long Christmas shopping lines combined with strung out employees is a recipe for bad online reviews. When customers have a negative experience, it can prompt them to express it with a negative review, even if they rarely ever post reviews about anything.
Using Customer Queue Software for a Better Christmas Future
Long Christmas shopping lines are a thing of the past when businesses use QLess. With the software, customers can get a spot in line immediately when they enter the store. They can use a physical kiosk location or use an app on their mobile phone to enter the queue, once they join, they will get a notification through a text or voice message of the approximate wait time which means they can effectively shop while they are waiting to be checked out. As their position in line advances, they will get notifications letting them know new wait times, they even have an option to request additional shopping time without losing their spot in line.
With QLess customer queue software, your lines are now dispersed throughout the store instead of clogging up the register area. You no longer need to manage a congested front end of the store. If customers find everything they need and still have time to wait before they get checked out, they can wander the store and browse more items, they even may find more purchases they weren't even looking for. If they were standing in line at a register, they may pick up some extra candy or gum, but when you give them the opportunity to wander the entire store while they wait, your add-on sales have the chance to be higher ticket items.
Employees no longer have to stare at intimidating Christmas shopping lines with gaggles of shoppers who grow testier with each passing moment they have to wait. When a little old lady pays with pocket change and a check, there will be no angry sighs and looks of annoyance from people in line behind her because they will be happily shopping.
When you eliminate the lines, everybody benefits:
Customer Analytics Improve Your Planning Abilities
The QLess customer queue software tracks valuable data and analytics from your customers' purchasing habits and preferences. This data helps give you better insights when planning your sales and promotions. You'll be able to draw more people to your store for sales on items they really want to buy. You can even send customers notifications of your store's current deals and promotions while they are waiting in the Christmas shopping line. Tracking data can also increase your employee engagement, which leads to a higher quality of customer service, productivity, and higher profits.
In addition to purchasing data, QLess also sends a satisfaction survey to the customer's phone as soon as they have exited the Christmas shopping line queue. Research shows that the sooner you can send customers a survey, the more likely they are to complete it. An immediate survey request sent to a mobile device is far more effective than surveys that are emailed to customers during the same day. You can use your survey data to optimize how your store operates, improve staffing, and find areas that need improvement.
Long Christmas Lines Aren't Just for Retail Stores
While retail stores undoubtedly get the highest amount of business during the holidays, there are many other industries that see an uptick in business for this cheerful season. QLess not only gives your retail location valuable convenience for your Christmas shopping lines but also lends the same to other industries that have similar holiday sales and events.
Theme Parks
During the holidays, theme parks become bedazzled with thousands of Christmas lights and decorations. They break out the hot cocoa stands, fill the air with holiday music, and bring in Santa and live reindeer. People who would otherwise not go to a theme park come out in droves to see the fantastic displays, lines to get into the park and lines for seasonally operating rides can be long and aggravating for park patrons. QLess customer queue software alleviates the lines and lets customers roam the park shops, food stands, and restaurants. They can plan out their park experience based on stores and rides they want to visit and if they need more time, they can push themselves back in line instead of having to start at the beginning.
Healthcare
Winter is a time when the cold and flu are rampant. With cheap or free flu shots, people flock to doctors' offices to protect themselves from sickness. Any time of year, however, there can be long lines to see a healthcare professional, waiting rooms only provide so much entertainment and patients become bored easily. With the QLess customer queue software, patients are able to leave the building and do whatever they want to until they are notified that they are getting near to the front of the waiting line making patients happy and improves their experience. Reviews are essential to any business's reputation, but especially so in the healthcare industry, satisfied patients mean they will leave good reviews and recommend your business to their friends and family.
Change the way your customers think about waiting in Christmas shopping lines with the QLess customer queue software. Once you implement it in your business, you'll wonder how you ever got along without it.
Why should government offices care about customer retention management? As a public service institution, governments often consider it the responsibility of the citizen to complete certain government-related tasks. Getting a new license, obtaining a permit, or paying potential bills or fines are all considered personal duties. The government may send out notices and reminders, but the idea of maintaining customers isn't often considered a necessary component of government agencies; however, it should be.
As a public service institution, government offices are responsible for meeting the needs of their citizens. Members of the population who fail to meet government requirements certainly damage their own good-standing, but they also create increased trouble for government agencies down the line. Without effective customer retention management, government offices spend their valuable money and resources monitoring the needs of their citizens, rather than trusting their population to complete the necessary tasks on their own. Not only does that waste valuable resources and decrease productivity, it also leads to chaotic workplaces that can't provide high-quality service to their citizens.
In addition, government offices strive to serve an engaged population. Public service agencies exist to improve citizen life and offer guidance to allow all citizens to comply with the governing laws of the land. In a democratic system, government offices need engaged citizens in order to tailor rules and regulations to the interests of the population. Without an engaged public, government offices fail to effectively meet their goals and enhance the lives of the population they serve.
Unfortunately, due to the very nature of government offices, effective customer retention management is often a problem. Painfully long lines, confusing guidelines, and a lack of clear communication all lead to a high rate of walk-out and no-shows in government offices. Citizens feel irritable when dealing with their government, and public agencies reflect their feelings of frustration. In the end, neither side gets exactly what they need to create positive engagement between government offices and their citizens.
Fortunately, proper queue management systems like the ones found at QLess can improve customer retention management initiatives across all government offices. Interactive mobile queuing allows every citizen to feel valued and respected while simultaneously establishing clear communication between government employees and the general population. By implementing a queue management systems, government executives can improve the functionality of their offices and address customer retention management in one easy system.
Respect for Your Citizens
Like all people, citizens in a government office just want to feel respected. While government agencies may be focused on their own customer retention management, individual citizens just want to know that their local leadership respects their personal time. Unfortunately, many members of the population feel the opposite when they set foot inside a government agency. In most local offices, customers are immediately greeted by chaotic environments, crowded waiting rooms, and painfully long lines.
In addition, the chances of speaking to an actual representative regarding wait times or necessary documents for a specific appointment are slim to none; therefore, many citizens wait through hours-long line, only to be told that they have to return with documentation they weren't even aware they needed.
By implementing a queue management system, government offices can streamline their processes and save valuable time for their citizens. What does that mean? Effective customer retention management, without a specific customer-focused initiative. By improving their office processes, government agencies can solve crucial problems in their office and simultaneously improve the experience for their citizens.
Put it simply, queue management systems implement web-based software that allow citizens to create online appointments and join virtual queues, no matter where they might be. Once citizens join a virtual queue, they'll receive real-time updates regarding their appointment time and they'll be offered the opportunity to communicate with government offices through text messages and voice calls.
Queue management systems contribute to customer retention management in three crucial ways. First, they allow citizens the opportunity to view wait times before they arrive at an office, when they have a better idea about how long a certain appointment may take them, they can take their schedule into their own hands and subsequently determine if they're able to attend the office that day or if they should wait for a better opportunity. Second, interactive mobile queuing allows citizens to join a line from anywhere; in other words, they don't have to be at the office in order to wait for their appointment. Not only does that create free time for your citizens, it also opens up space in your offices, lessening the crowded waiting rooms and decreasing the chaotic environments. Lastly, queue management systems streamline communication between citizens and government employees. Members of the population can gather crucial information about their appointment before they arrive at the office and prepare accordingly, reducing wasted time for citizens and employees alike.
Most importantly, these improved systems communicate to citizens that their government respects their personal time. When people feel respected, they're much more likely to walk away feeling like they had a positive experience, which will improve government relations with the citizenry over time.
Information on Your Citizens Specific Needs
When it comes to customer retention management, governments face one crucial problem--they have very little idea about what their citizens actually need. Beyond shorter wait times, most government executives are in the dark regarding the complaints of their citizenry. General frustration seems to outweigh constructive criticism because governments know that they need to improve citizen satisfaction levels, but they're not sure how to do it.
Queue management systems can be a crucial force in customer retention management by providing in-depth information regarding the needs of a specific citizenry. As a web-based software, queue management systems gather valuable data on the habits of the local population. Information regarding no-shows, walk-aways, service duration, and customer profiles are all available in one easy-to-use system.
In addition, queue management systems provide automated SMS surveys to the population, giving citizens a unique opportunity to voice their concerns for themselves. Surveys can be tailored to the specific inquiries of the government or they can ask general questions about the citizen's experience. With this tool, governments can glean personal feedback from their citizens and gain some insights into the process that work and those that don't.
By using a queue management system, government offices can make valuable steps forward in their customer retention management. These systems allow government agencies an in-depth look at their citizenry, both on a broad scale and on an individual level. In addition, surveys included in queue management systems can expose problems government officials never even considered. Surveys also allow individual citizens to feel heard and appreciated, improving their overall satisfaction with their government offices.
Whether or not their specific feedback is implemented, customers will feel that they have a place to voice their frustration. Customer retention management can become an integral part of government affairs, rather than an afterthought that's rarely addressed and seldom improved. By providing feedback on citizen habits and preferences, queue management systems improve engagement between government employees and individual members of the population and allow opportunities for future improvement in government offices.
Improved Public Perception
Given the bad reputation typical of many government offices, many citizens won't even consider stepping foot in a government agency unless they absolutely have to. Heading to the DMV or braving the permit office is the stuff of nightmares, only to be attempted in times of total necessity. Unfortunately, that leads to a string of disengaged citizens who fail to meet government deadlines and cause further problems for their local leadership.
However, a queue management system can work to do more than simply improve your customer retention management initiatives--it can actually change public perception around your government offices. As more and more citizens are served in a timely manner, word will spread regarding the increased efficiency in government agencies.
Satisfied citizens will spread the news to friends and colleagues, spreading the positive news among their own communities. When citizens attend the offices for themselves, they'll immediately experience the modernization of age-old systems through web-based software, proving without a doubt that archaic systems in government agencies are gone for good. The simple implementation of a queue management system can help to improve public perception around your government office over time. When citizens feel confident in their government processes, they'll be more likely to attend government offices and complete their necessary requirements in a timely, effective manner.
Customer retention management is just as important in government offices as it is in any other business. By managing the needs of the population, government agencies can cut costs, engage with their citizens, and improve the efficiency of their offices. QLess solutions offer effective queue management systems that can assist with customer retention management. Request a demo today to experience firsthand what our system can do for you.
Government offices exist in large part to deliver services to tax-paying citizens; unfortunately, a high volume of customers, a staff of overworked employees, and systems built on outdated technology lend to the overall ineffectiveness of government services. Instead of timely operations that meet the various needs of their citizens, government agencies are often crowded, chaotic workplaces filled with frustrated individuals. How many citizens dread waiting in line at the DMV? Even worse, are the citizens who fall through the cracks in the aftermath of natural disasters unable to ever receive the help they need?. Government agencies are overrun with questions and demands, anyone who's ever waited in line at a government office has witnessed firsthand the flood of citizens who need help and the subsequent exasperation of employees bombarded with questions without a moment to breath, day in and day out.
However, the high volume of citizens isn't the problem. More often than not, government agencies themselves are struggling to assist the people in their community. It's not a lack of motivation or a desire to make their services more difficult to attain; instead, many government agencies simply don't have the resources they need to provide their services in a timely, effective manner. Budgetary issues, problems with under-staffing, and ineffective communication across departments all contribute to the problematic government offices every citizen experiences at one time or another.
Thankfully, scheduling software can provide a solution to the chaotic environment found in government offices. An online appointment booking and queue management system like the one found at QLess is a convenient tool that eliminates long lines, crowded waiting rooms, and unhappy customers, with little to no effort from government employees. With effective scheduling software, government offices can transform their services, streamlined processes, effective time management, instantaneous communication with visitors--these and more benefits of scheduling software can change the way that government offices interact with their citizens.
Increased Organization
When citizens arrive at government offices, they often leave with one common complaint--a lack of organization within the agency. Citizens enter a crowded workplace and wait in lines for hours on end, with very little communication until they arrive at the desk of a government employee. Many times citizens will reach their face-to-face meeting, only to be told that they don't have the necessary paperwork to complete the task they came to accomplish. Citizens expect high-quality services out of their government offices, which doesn't include long lines and ineffective communication.
With scheduling software, government offices can increase the organization of their services and reduce the time that citizens wait in line. By switching to a technology-based system, government offices allow customers to join a virtual queue and wait for their appointment time, no matter where they are. They'll receive real-time updates regarding their appointment status and can easily communicate with government employees in case they have questions regarding their appointment. Scheduling software allows citizens to spend less time in line and simultaneously increases the organization of government offices by streamlining scheduling processes.
Improved Staff Productivity
Most government agencies experience issues with effective time management among their employees. Due to budgetary constraints most offices are under-staffed and employees are already forced to work in overdrive to meet the demands of taxpaying customers; therefore, a lack of organization means that employees aren't being used to their full potential.
Scheduling software can help; with an online appointment system, employees no longer have to waste their valuable time organizing their own schedules. Instead, all appointments are made through an online system. Employees receive real-time updates regarding cancellations or no-shows, and any gaps in their schedule are automatically filled. With scheduling software, employees can focus on their jobs, leaving all the behind-the-scenes organizing to the cloud-based system.
Streamlined Communication
When citizens arrive at government offices, it's often the first contact they have with government employees. They have no idea about potential wait times or any paperwork they might need to complete their appointment. In addition, employees also receive no information about their customers. If a citizen fails to show up for their appointment, employees are left in the dark, wondering if they should move to the next customer or wait for the citizen to arrive.
Scheduling software streamlines communication between citizens and employees, allowing both staff and customers full transparency regarding wait times, appointment slots, and appointment processes. Using a cloud-based system, citizens can schedule an appointment, no matter where they are. In addition, they can join virtual queues, receive real-time updates about estimated wait times, and request more time before their appointment, if needed.
Citizens can communicate through text messages, voice calls, and QLess kiosks at their appointment location. Interactive mobile queuing available with scheduling software allows seamless communication between employees and citizens, eliminating the various misunderstandings that often occur within government agencies.
Demonstrated Respect
When citizens arrive at government agencies, they want to feel respected and valued; after all, they're taxpaying members of the population. Citizens want to know that their tax dollars are being put to good use, so they expect prompt service and high-quality assistance. Long lines communicate the opposite of respect; in fact, many customers grow increasingly frustrated waiting for their appointment slot as they feel that their time is not being valued.
By eliminating the need to wait in physical lines, scheduling software demonstrates respect for all citizens. Instead of forcing them to take off work and waste valuable time sitting in a crowded waiting room, scheduling software acknowledges that the customer's time is important. It allows citizens to take charge of their own schedule and arrive at their appointment precisely when assistance is available, thereby optimizing time efficiency and avoiding unproductive waits. When citizens feel that they are being respected, they're much more likely to respect employees, improving the overall mood within government agencies tremendously.
Updated Information
Many government agencies want to improve their office processes. Unfortunately, the chaotic work environment barely lends itself to effective day-to-day operations, much less improved functionality of the office as a whole. Scheduling software solves both problems; not only does it allow government offices to run more effectively almost immediately, it also provides feedback on what can be improved over time.
While scheduling software improves office processes, it also gathers information on citizen behavior and service metrics. Reports deliver valuable data on walkaways, no-shows, and other user metrics; similarly, staff productivity and efficiency are also monitored. In addition, customers can provide their own feedback through surveys within the system. The various data collected allows managers to identify key areas for improvement, scheduling software offers immediate improvement to government offices, but it also allows managers to create lasting change with their agencies over time.
Saved Costs
Scheduling software changes the individual experience within a government office for both employees and citizens; however, it also offers a cost-saving method of improvement that aligns with budgetary constraints. Since interactive mobile queuing uses web-based software, agencies never have to worry about frustrating hardware, updates, or installations. The software saves time and ensures your office continually runs smoothly, but it also cuts back on pricey IT-related costs.
In addition, the simple implementation of scheduling software can cut down on costs within a government office. A lack of organization and low productivity often lead to higher expenses for the company as a whole, with very little results to balance out the costs. By streamlining communication, increasing productivity, and effectively allocating resources, interactive mobile queuing systems ensure that the government budget is used effectively, saving costs for the agency in the long-term.
Improved Public Perception
It should come as no surprise that government offices rank fairly low in terms of positive public perception. Most citizens can easily list off various complaints with government services, and the archaic processes and outdated technology used within most offices are of no help. Government agencies feel the pressure to improve their services, if only to increase citizen satisfaction rates.
With scheduling software, government offices can easily improve their public perception. Not only does scheduling software effortlessly improve office processes, it also allows citizens to feel valued and respect. When everyone at your office leaves satisfied with their service, they'll spread the word to friends and colleagues. Consistent positive experiences will change the stigma of the crowded, unorganized government office. Over time, public perception of government offices will improve, relieving the crushing pressure most agencies feel to improve their efficiency.
The QLess award-winning queuing and scheduling technology can bring all the benefits of scheduling software to your government agency. Our software identifies the pain points within your business and solves your problems, with little to no effort on your end. Improved organization, saved costs, higher customer satisfaction--you can find all of it and more with our QLess system. If you'd like to see how our QLess solution works for you, please request a demo today.
In a technologically-advanced world, all industries are fighting to modernize their systems and keep up with a tech-savvy population. Government offices are no different. While long lines and face-to-face interactions alone used to be the norm, new technology can simplify government processes, improving experiences for citizens and employees alike.
Furthermore, government agencies want to be at the cutting edge of new technology. These offices have a responsibility to satisfy their citizens, one that goes beyond the normal business-client relationship. Government offices serve tax-paying citizens who expect a certain standard of service from their community organization. Unfortunately, outdated technologies and budgetary restraints often lead to general dissatisfaction among citizens.
What if you could reduce waiting times in government offices? What about an online appointment booking system that could streamline processes for employees and staff? With a mobile queuing app, you can bring the latest updates in technology to your citizens, providing these and more benefits to your government agencies. In addition, you can increase your productivity and staff engagement, cutting costs and enhancing the experience of your citizens.
A mobile queuing app allows you to streamline your chaotic office processes and do away with outdated norms; however, mobile queuing apps also vault government agencies into the modern century, allowing employees to connect with a mobile generation. New generations are well-versed in mobile technology, they expect the rest of their world, including their government agencies, to align with their digital environment.
A mobile queuing app changes how government offices work. Instead of frustrated citizens who are high on complaints and low on patience talking to overworked, equally as irritated staff, government offices can transform into organized, effective workplaces with an eye towards future improvement.
Technological-updates often come with a certain element of skepticism, particularly for government offices. Massive changes to already-established systems produce a sense of nervousness and fear; nevertheless, QLess queue management systems implement simple, streamlined process that change your office processes with little to no effort from your employees or executives.
With QLess solutions, citizens are able to use a mobile queuing app to join virtual lines at the government office they need to attend. These cloud-based line management systems eliminate the need for physical lines in the government office. Instead, citizens can receive real-time updates about their estimated wait times and even request more time before their appointment, if needed. Interactive platforms also allow easy, off-site communication between employees and citizens through text messages and voice calls, as well as opportunities to receive updates via QLess kiosks and monitors at the physical office.
By transferring to a mobile queuing app, governments allow citizens to join a line for their appointment anywhere, anytime. In addition, it eliminates the need for on-location lines, clearing out government offices and allowing citizens to complete their business quickly and efficiently when they do arrive for their appointment. All these processes are completed through a web-based software, allowing easy implementation and a seamless transition for government employees and citizens.
Government offices often have quite a negative reputation. Heading to the DMV or the local permits office is discussed with a sense of impending doom, and often requires months of planning before citizens will brave the crowded waiting rooms of government offices. With an effective mobile queuing app, government offices can increase staff productivity and engagement, leading to a decrease in the often-chaotic workspaces of government agencies.
A mobile queuing app adds some necessary organization to your government agency. In current set-ups, employees often spend their entire day bombarded by demanding citizens, each of which has important problems to address. The packed waiting room adds extra stress to employees, as the pressure to serve customers as quickly as possible feels especially crucial when hundreds of other citizens are waiting.
Mobile queueing apps organize staff schedules for them, filtering citizens into time slots and filling free spaces automatically. Employees can allocate their resources towards actually helping customers, rather than managing the stress of irritable citizens. In addition, it gives employees a chance to see an overview of their schedule for the day, reducing the pressure of a seemingly endless pile of work. By decreasing the tension between employees and citizens, you can change the mood in your government offices, all with a simple mobile queuing app.
While a mobile queuing app can cause instantaneous change in your government offices, it can also create a chance for future improvement, due to the current outdated systems, most executives don't even know where to start when it comes to improving customer satisfaction. Beyond eliminating lines, the user experience is often lost in the hustle and bustle of the government office; however, web-based queuing software collects data on your user experience.
Queue management systems can provide in-depth information about citizen behavior, including data on no-shows, walkaways, and service duration. A mobile queuing app also allows individuals to receive SMS surveys regarding their individual service experience. Through these tools, management can identify key areas for improvement and monitor their overall employee productivity.
A mobile queuing app can support sustainable development by creating continual opportunities for future improvement. Instead of being in the dark regarding user experience, mobile queuing apps provide valuable data and consistent feedback on citizen's satisfaction levels. It bridges the gap between government and citizen and allows both parties to hear each other, leading to consistent growth and development in government offices.
QLess provides queue management systems that can change the outdated processes in your government offices, using our mobile queueing app, you can provide your citizens with the crucial opportunity to use their time more efficiently, rather than sitting in the crowded waiting room of a government office building. Not only will you increase the overall satisfaction of your citizens, you'll also experience an increase in staff productivity and a boost in the overall mood within your government agencies. If you think QLess might be the right solution for you, request a demo today. Vault your government processes into the modern age. Invest in a QLess mobile queuing app today.
Government offices aren’t exactly known for their efficiency and strong customer experience. Whether it is the DMV or passport office, wait times are abundant, appointment scheduling is difficult, and the experience is impersonal. Slow and disorganized government services create the perception of ineffective government, but there are a lot of bottlenecks that hinder the industry. That is why many people are reluctant to utilize government services, even when necessary. "The average wait time for a service at the DMV is 44 minutes," according to research from the DMV themselves. Wait times at these offices are so arduous they’ve become cliched, spoofed in tv shows and animated movies alike, but they are not the only problem that is endemic with government offices. The difficulty of access and inconvenience of the average government office’s appointment scheduling system contributes to a distinctly unpleasant customer experience.
However, there are options that save valuable time for customers and government offices. An online appointment scheduling system like a DMV app can completely transform the relationship between a government agency and its average customer. An appointment scheduling software like QLess can dramatically impact a government agency. An appointment scheduling software creates a flexible calendar that government offices can manage and enables customers to schedule their appointments at any time of the day. With an option like a DMV app, customers have a software solution designed to make their experience easier and less stressful. These software solutions have been shown to improve employee productivity by up to 90%, heavily increase customer satisfaction, and have numerous government applications. Let’s look at how an online booking system can help government offices improve outcomes and deliver more satisfactory customer experiences.
One of the things customers look for in a service is that it is convenient. Convenience is a differentiator for a lot of businesses. That is how services like Uber, Amazon, and Doordash have come to dominate the marketplace. While government offices aren’t operating in competitive industries like these services, it is still imperative they offer convenience to their customers if they want to keep their customers happy. Convenience is essential for modern businesses because time is a valuable commodity to the average consumer. According to a report from Business Wire, "83% of consumers say convenience is more important to them now than it was five years ago, and 97% of respondents had backed out of a purchase because it wasn’t convenient to them." If government offices want to ensure people use their services, making them convenient to access goes a long way.
Appointment booking software is a solution designed to ensure maximum customer convenience. They enable customers to schedule their appointment online at a time of their choosing. Customers simply use the appointment scheduling app or website, find an available time slot, select from the appointment types available, and book their appointment. This appointment booking service is available 24/7 without needing any interaction between customers and staff. The ability to schedule appointments at their convenience immediately improves the customer experience for those utilizing government offices. Rather than have to navigate outdated websites with long hold times or book through a phone line that only operates during business hours, customers can book at their leisure.
Customers also can check in for their appointments virtually through the queue management system features. They can monitor the wait times for their upcoming appointments, enter virtual queues without being physically present, and arrive at the office when it is time for their appointment. Government offices are not known for the convenient experience they offer customers, but with appointment scheduling software, the narrative can begin to shift.
One of the aspects of the government office experience that feels the worst for customers is the complete lack of communication. Customers walk into the office, receive a number, and sit down and wait for their number to pop up on a screen. It makes customers feel like they are just a number which is not what a business in any industry should want to convey. Providing a more communicative and personal experience to those that enter the office is incredibly important. These are things that directly determine the satisfaction of customers. While government offices rely less on customers’ opinions than businesses in many other industries, negative reviews and unhappy customers are still detrimental to their success. According to Segment, "71% of consumers are frustrated by impersonal shopping experiences." The complete lack of personalization that customers experience when they schedule their appointments and wait for them is a big factor in the generally negative perception of government services.
A visitor management system for government with appointment scheduling features can be a big asset in this regard. That is because many of them, like QLess, offers bi-directional communication features. This means government offices can message customers, and customers can message government offices. This provides excellent value for both customers and staff. Rather than the same old standard appointment confirmation email that is largely ignored, staff can send an appointment reminder and custom messages to receive updates on whether they can expect a customer to show. Customers can update staff with appointment details for a more up-to-the-minute, customized appointment. Message greetings can be automated to send when customers join lines or register for appointments. More personalized correspondence and clearer communication will ensure customers don’t just feel like a number. It will also keep government offices updated with their calendar and ensure fewer appointment no-shows.
In every industry, flexibility is an asset. The ability to adapt to changes and roll with punches is crucial. For government offices, there are a lot of different issues that are likely to come up. Someone will not show up on appointment day, walk-ins and appointments will conflict, and large backlogs of customers will build. Lines will grow longer and more arduous without a solution to address these problems. This will contribute to the unhappy customer issue. Flexibility helps offices like the DMV reduce bottlenecks and increase the number of customers they serve daily.
One of the top ways to become a more flexible business is to utilize the QLess flex appointment management software. This can help a business shift from rigid calendars that don’t respond well to the standard changes of day-to-day business to a more agile enterprise. The appointment scheduling software provides a flexible calendar that can be adjusted on the fly. This will show employees everyone in line, what type of appointment they are waiting for, and the government employee that will process their request. Staff can move these appointments around, either into different time slots or have them serviced by different employees. This means that offices can make changes on the fly. The calendar management features can also be automated to do this for businesses. The government office can set the rules for their calendar and line, and the software will automate accordingly. If someone is late or not going to show up, they can be moved back in line or out of line, and other customers can be moved into their slots.
Hybrid queues can be created that accommodate walk-in customers and customers with scheduled appointments simultaneously. Online appointment scheduling software with flexible calendar management can make a big impact by helping offices to become more agile. The better an enterprise handles changes, the likelier they are to have a smooth, straightforward process. This will increase the number of customers they can intake, reduce bottlenecks, and provide a more seamless customer experience.
Your staff will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of a flexible calendar and appointment management system. Let’s face it, government workers can often be overburdened. There is a constant stream of customers in dire need of important services, the system moves slowly, and customers become frustrated. Staff are the ones on the receiving end of that frustration. They face a tall task, and implementing tools that reduce the weight of that burden and increase staff productivity is crucial. Many changes induced by the pandemic have caused significant backlogs in government systems, and workers are facing the tall task of getting out from under that backlog. This is causing a lot of stress and difficulty for them. This isn’t the first time workers at government offices faced tasks like this. According to Mercury News, "From 2017 to 2018, the number of overtime hours required from DMV workers tripled as they tried to roll out a new flight ID system." Many workers reported being sick from stress. These workers are only human, and they deserve a positive work environment.
An appointment scheduling system helps ensure they get the environment they deserve. An online appointment scheduling DMV software will remove employees’ need to handle scheduling matters. It will also streamline operations for employees. With a flexible calendar, employees can view and manage appointment times, types of appointment, and more. Staff can send custom or mass messages to individuals or large groups, including entire lineups of people or people with appointments scheduled at specific times. They can rely on the automated appointment scheduler and queue management features to deliver the right customers at the right time. Essentially, they don’t have to worry about overseeing minor details and can focus on handling the office’s services. The combination of queue management and appointment software streamlines their entire workflows.
One thing that every industry must consider is the importance of accessibility. In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, ensuring that those with physical and mental disabilities would not face intentional or unintentional discrimination in public life. It is all the more critical for government offices to add every necessary accommodation to make accessing these crucial government services easy for people of all backgrounds. Disabilities are an everyday reality for a significant portion of the population. According to the Center for Disease Control, "61 million adults in the United States live with a disability of some kind." This is more than a quarter of the population. These disabilities can range from mobility issues to vision impairment, and the rate of the population impacted climbs as people age. This impacts many of the customers that government offices will be serving, and it is important they have the necessary accommodations in place.
The appointment scheduling and queue management features of QLess are specifically designed with accessibility in mind. These online services are designed to simplify usage for people with varying needs, so government offices can rest assured that they are receptive to all customers’ requirements. Some of these features that you’ll find include a text-to-speech reader, dyslexia-friendly font, pausable animations, and cursor customizations. These small but significant adjustments ensure those using QLess to check into government lines or book appointments can go at their own pace, have the on-screen text adjusted to suit their unique needs, and ensure the process is smooth and seamless. The services offered at government offices are crucial, people visiting for visa renewals, new licenses, and other important services are there because they need to be. Offices must take the necessary steps to tailor their services toward the broadest possible audiences and provide those with disabilities the tools to make the services easily accessed.
Customers have more to offer an enterprise than just their patronage. There is a lot of value to learning what your customers think of their experience and discovering their unique insights. Customers are the people every industry is geared towards, and their opinions can help indicate areas where a government office might fall short; however, collecting information from this has remained a challenge. Customers will share their opinion, either with your business or online. Receiving online reviews is very public, which is great for strong reviews, and bad for negative. With a customer feedback solution, businesses can hear directly from their customers without it being public. This is best done through the pulse survey features on QLess.
The pulse survey feature on QLess is an option government offices can implement. When customers receive a service from your office, they automatically get an SMS message with a survey link. These survey messages are sent directly to customers’ cell phone, so many will likely answer. Not every customer will take the survey, but much more will respond than if an office sends the survey link through email a day after the appointment. Your government office can ask customers an array of custom questions to gather important subjective information.
Find out what the incoming citizens thought of the appointment scheduling process, how the wait was, and what they think could improve the overall experience. Questions can be asked as open-ended responses or closed ratings, and the data is automatically stored; from there, offices can look at the responses and see patterns and connections in the overall responses. If many customers complain that the staff isn’t welcoming or the wait times are too extensive, it is clear where your problems are. On the flip side, if customers are responding with enthusiasm over your customer service or appointment booking process, these are marketable strengths and reviews you can share.
The collection of subjective data like customer surveys is important. Perception is reality, and if your government office has many angry citizens leaving appointments and providing reviews, it is clear there is much to learn. But objective data might be even more important. Having number-backed information on customer flow, wait times, the number of customers serviced, and appointment no-show percentage can help offices discover their key flaws. Data is an invaluable asset in every industry. According to DataProt, "Enterprises that use business intelligence are five times more likely to make faster decisions than ones that don’t." Data peels away an enterprise’s own perceptions and helps reveal a more objective truth, but collecting data on things like wait times and flow can be difficult. That is one crucial area where DMV online scheduling and queue software can profoundly impact.
QLess provides business intelligence features that allow offices to track crucial aspects of their businesses. When customers check into lines, it is automatically recorded, and the average wait time is shown. This can be segmented into times of day, wait times for appointment types, dates of the week, and wait times for each employee. Some other crucial pieces of data offices gain from this feature are the no-show percentage and the number of customers serviced. They can track if their intake numbers are as high as they should be, if a substantial number of customers are making appointments, and learn from the results. Data provides offices with concrete information about their performance. Armed with this information, they can initiate changes that will improve their results. They can send additional appointment reminders if their no-show percentage is high or add staff at specific times if they notice wait times increase at a certain time of day. These changes will improve outcomes and customer satisfaction rates.
The government is supposed to be a leader in technology and innovation, but many offices, from passport agencies to the motor vehicle registration center, will use the standard numbered system. This is the same system they’ve used for years, but times have changed. The demands of consumers have shifted, and technology has evolved to the point where these systems are outdated. Implementing a DMV app will update an office for the modern world without needing a major investment. Customers prioritize mobile when interacting with businesses. Mobile stands out in an age where smartphones are abundant, and most people prefer convenience. According to Heady, "57% of shoppers prefer mobile apps to other channels." Running your customer journey through a mobile device will empower the citizens using your services more freedom and easier access. It’ll also align with their predisposition toward mobile.
One of the best aspects of QLess is its seamless government integration. QLess can be integrated with .gov websites, where citizens can access links to schedule appointments or join a virtual queue directly from your website. It requires very little work on your end, and if you have a more significant tech stack that you want QLess to integrate with, it has API integrations to smoothly integrate with the rest of your systems. It is a frictionless transition with limited operational costs. Finding an appointment solution that is easy to integrate into an office’s pre-existing infrastructure and aligns with consumers’ preferences is a double advantage. "The 85% of Americans own a smartphone," according to the Pew Research Center, and that number is only going to rise. Implementing a convenient, mobile solution will allow your customers to access your business in a way suited to them and create a more modern system that is drastically more efficient than the one currently in place.
Frustration is common when trying to access government services. There are a lot of issues that citizens tend to complain about. Long wait times are the most common, but difficulty scheduling appointments and accessing resources is a consistent complaint. Many offices use outdated systems they haven’t changed or enhanced in years, which cuts into the customer experience; however, there is software for government offices designed to increase ease of access and the overall customer experience.
Online appointment scheduling DMV software gives customers a mobile solution that allows them to schedule appointments anytime. They can browse appointment slots and staff availability and schedule a time that works for them. They can also use the communication features to keep staff in the loop and send details for their appointment.
This software is an easy-to-integrate tool for offices that collects high-value data and provides flexible calendar management features. It sends automated reminders to reduce appointment no-show rates, increases customer satisfaction, and boosts staff productivity. It is a tall task managing the complex demands of citizens, but government teams have a much better tool for this task with appointment schedule software. QLess is a flexible, high-impact solution that can give systems a much-needed update.
Officials have been trying to figure out how to reduce customer waiting time in government offices for decades, to say it's a problem is the understatement of the year. Government employees are fully aware of the situation, but until recently, there hasn't been much they could do about it. Far too many government departments still rely on an old-fashion numbers system for seeing visitors. A citizen arrives at the office, takes a number, and waits, regardless of why the person is there, under that system, a visitor can theoretically wait for several hours just to ask a question or to be told to bring in a certain form or specific documentation. Not only does it waste the citizen's time, but it also takes up an employee's time. Is it any wonder that some government offices don't run as efficiently as they should?
Department budgets may not include enough money to hire and train new employees to cover the crowds; however, there are countless reasons that some government offices have long wait times. Lack of money is simply the most common, closely followed by lack of resources, the positive news is that the QLess virtual queue system is an affordable way for your office to maximizing its resources while minimizing wait times and eliminating citizen complaints. Don't you want your department to stand out as a pillar in your community?
The only secret to cutting down on wait times is taking your office virtual. Relying on cloud software can streamline the daily schedule for all of your employees. The constituents visiting your office will also experience heightened satisfaction, alleviating any apprehensions associated with future visits to the parks department or permits office. Your department's reputation will soar, leading to a steady stream of community members filing through your doors. Thanks to the QLess platform, however, you won't be overtaxed or overwhelmed. The virtual queue does practically everything for you.
Allow Citizens to Choose
If you want to know how to reduce customer waiting time, then you have to focus on pleasing your citizens. Primarily, reducing the wait times for each visitor provides a notable advantage to your office, underscoring its significance; however, spending too much time in line or the waiting room is the complaint that communities are the most vocal about, particularly as it applies to their local government departments. Besides, in this case, you can make your visitors happy while improving the professional lives of your employees, too.
A digital queue system opens up the opportunity for citizens to set their own appointments because they don't have to rely on a first-come, first-served system. If there's a time slot open at noon, a citizen can book that slot, then show up at noon as opposed to waiting around the office. With that free time, community members can fulfill other tasks until their appointed meeting time draws close.
Follow the Daily Schedule
Following a set schedule is an essential aspect of learning how to reduce customer waiting time. The QLess platform organizes the calendar each day, every citizen who books an appointment for the day gets the slot of their choice. Nevertheless, the system can also make space for visitors who arrive without a reservation. Such visitors aren't given priority over citizens who have a scheduled appointment, but they're given the first slot that's available that day or have the option to reserve a time for another day.
Prep Before Each Meeting
Employees can streamline the waiting process because they have the chance to prepare for each incoming visitor. When a citizen creates an appointment with the QLess system, they also include information about the reasons for their visit. If government agents use the time between their meetings to prep for what comes next, then they can help people at a much faster rate. They're never unprepared, which leads to efficient, speedy service. Not only do visitors spend less time waiting in line, but they spend less time at the window, as well.
Communicate with Citizens
You have to communicate with your citizens if you're genuine about figuring out how to reduce customer waiting time. Even when you have a schedule in place, things can go awry. When that happens, citizens show up to your office, but they still have to wait. Implementing the QLess system lets you reach out to let people know that the schedule is off by 15 minutes, half an hour, and so on. That way, the citizen who has a noon appointment knows not to show up until half past the hour rather than arriving on time and being forced to hang around until an employee is available.
Pay Attention to What the People Want
You can decrease wait times by listening to your community, even if they aren't telling you what they want directly. A virtual queue platform analyzes the behaviors of everyone who visits your department. Pay attention to the most popular appointment times, the days of the week when people are more likely to make an appointment, and how often people miss their appointments.
To figure out how to reduce customer waiting time, all you have to do is learn about the QLess system because virtual queues are the future. No one has time for lines, and no one has the inclination to stand in them, either. It's better for the citizens, your office, and your bottom line to allow your visitors the freedom to choose when they come in and to show that you respect their time. It's an affordable, long-term solution for any government department, regardless of how you benefit your community.
To learn how to transform your government office and boost operational efficiencies, read our whitepaper, The Digital Citizen.
There is tremendous value in queue management when it comes to the workflow of customer visits on educational campuses. If you're in the education field or looking to visit schools for you or someone else, it can be exceptionally valuable to have queue software in place. A software that could make the visit more informative, easier to navigate, and a more positive, interactive experience overall.
Having the convenience of the time-saving queue technology can make a huge difference in the day-to-day existence for existing students on campus and those looking to join a new university. The importance of queues in schools can easily be judged as an indication of how well-run a given institution is; therefore, it is imperative for the institution to prioritize the establishment of optimal queue services. Enhanced efficiency in this regard not only ensures streamlined operations but also significantly enhances the visitor experience. Whether individuals seek a college tour, registration assistance, or information about the institution's offerings, a well-executed software management system is paramount in delivering seamless service delivery.
Admissions
The Admissions area is a common area that will be visited by both current students as well as newly enrolled and prospective students. It can be positively daunting when first getting onto a large campus. The campus information center plays a pivotal role within the campus ecosystem, serving as the primary resource hub where students seek answers to a diverse array of academic inquiries. With hundreds and often thousands of students looking to find answers simultaneously, it has the potential to turn into a massive twisting line of people waiting impatiently for help, and because Admissions look to serve its students who visit as they would other customer visits, they too can feel the frustrations of being overwhelmed with too much information that needs to be organized as it is addressed. Like any smart business, campuses need to serve their students and customers in a reasonable, organized, and efficient manner, and with the proper queue software, Admissions can be easily turned into a headache-free endeavor.
Practical Applications
What does this look like in practical application? Instead of having to wait forever in line in a cramped office with fifty other people waiting to speak with someone in Admissions, you as a customer, prospective student, or parent, can simply walk up to a dedicated tablet where you can easily enter a digital queue. There's no need to take a number as you're immediately put into an organized queue that can then notify you when it's your turn to be helped. Further, students can see their place in line with the aid of monitors utilized in the student management system. Knowing how long they have to wait can help all parties involved make better use of their time and energies, further keeping stress levels down and productivity up.
Transportation
Schools often have dedicated transportation for students, as well. With larger sprawling universities, this inner-campus transport can be vital to everyone being able to easily commute to classes, dormitories, administration buildings, and beyond campus locations; nevertheless, with queue software, even the bus systems can help to alleviate stress with queue notifications of departures and arrivals of public transportation. This further helps to reduce any negative associations with the experience of a campus visit and wait times.
More Areas Where Queue Software Streamlines Efficiency
Other vital areas where queue software can help with customer visits include:
Streamlining Every Experience- There are so many aspects to the educational institution that can benefit from a streamlined queue management system. With this comes the lifting of unnecessary burden on both students and staff, making life easier for everyone.
Mobile Queueing
The flexibility that mobile connectivity gives us today is greater than ever before. With more and more time being spent on our mobile devices, it only makes sense that we utilize this mobility in every way possible. The advantages of mobile queueing not only allow for literal mobility when waiting but also the flexibility to check-in, register, inquire, and utilize resources in an entirely new way.
This rapid acquisition of information serves not only the students but also potential customers who visit campuses for non-academic reasons as well. The way that this works in practice can look like a student or customer signing in to their queue, and when it's their turn in line, they will be notified via SMS message (also known as a text message). Mobile queuing can also notify individuals via email and phone call as well.
This mobile queueing also has an incredibly intuitive user interface, so it minimizes the organizational disaster that can easily and often occur in long lines in real-life.
Another benefit is students and all others who are waiting in the queue are then free to move about the campus or office without being tethered to the site itself. With management being handled from a single queue management portal, it drastically reduces the workload on the staff as well.
Less Time Working On Lines, More Time Working To Improve The Campus Experience
When students and staff alike are better organized, it allows for more people to get the help they need in a shorter period of time helping students to focus on studies and development of their education. The benefits for the staff increase as well, spending less time tied up in red tape means more time educating, advising, and working one-on-one with students and other staff. When resources are limited, which is often the case, this can become extra valuable.
Fairness Demonstrated
Another fantastic feature in queueing software is the fact that it serves to process information more fairly; for example, in a computer classroom, there are often multiple students needing help simultaneously, and by utilizing a mobile queue, the teacher is able to help the students in order of sign up. Further, in the case of administrative offices, the queue software makes it easy to direct students to the appropriate staff member who can properly help them.
In the case of customer visits, a single staff member can be put in charge as the primary customer service person for more routine inquiries, while more complicated requests can be designated to a proper adviser. All of this being done digitally and via mobile access continues to help streamline the interactive process, putting the right inquiries in the right queue. This, of course, doesn't preclude a person in real life adding people manually to the queue, and adding the human touch can also make the experience feel more personal as well.
Easy To Use
Most individuals are able to operate the system with very little training. This technology was created to be very user-friendly, easy to learn and operate, and for institutions that employ and educate individuals from all over the globe, quick and fluid comprehension of technological interfaces becomes essential.
As the world evolves technologically, businesses fight to keep up with fast-paced advancements, that includes colleges and universities, which may be left in the dust if they don't adopt an electronic queuing system to deal with current and future students. Incoming coeds have grown up with technology, they know how quickly it evolves, and they adapt with it effortlessly. In general, they expect the same from the places where they choose to do business, even the business of earning a degree. In a nod to the need for mobile-compatible systems and online opportunities, many institutions of higher learning offer at least a few online classes, some seeing the wave of the future, offer entire degree programs online, with the exception of lab work or practical experience that needs to be done on campus or in the field.
The point is that your university can benefit from adapting to the future, as well. What is the attrition rate at your school? How many students drop their classes or leave their programs entirely because they aren't getting the help or services they need? Academic institutions don't always have the resources or the staff power to handle the influx of students they see each day and advisors double- and triple-book themselves when setting up meetings with students. At the beginning of each semester, the Registrar's Office and the Admissions Office are overrun. Students run into trouble immediately whether they're attempting to sign up for classes, pay their tuition, or request help from student services, there is no organization in the admin departments, worse, employees are stuck doing every job that needs to be filled, including wrangling all the incoming students.
Together, those components are a recipe for disaster, university employees are frustrated and stretched thin, students are impatient at best, at worst, they're demotivated to the point of leaving school. That's not the purpose of higher education, students are supposed to be inspired by new ideas and subjects and college should prepare them for their futures, but that can't happen when everyone involved is bogged down in bureaucratic BS. Taking the step to update your offices on a high-tech level has an array of benefits that will positively affect your bottom line, staff morale, and the well-being of the student body.
The Future Is Mobile
It's worthwhile to implement an electronic queuing system solely for the students who attend your university. There are many more reasons to update your office to a cloud-based management system, of course, but the peace of mind and pleasure it will bring your students is no small advantage. The young adults who attend college now and who will descend on campuses all over the country in the next few years compose a generation that has been raised on the cloud. Where millennials are familiar with floppy disks, CD ROMS, and flash drives, today's student bodies have always known what it's like to save photos and files that go straight to the cloud, where it waits until they need it.
The QLess system operates using cloud technology, as well. Not only does this cut down on maintenance costs and the potential for data corruption, but it's also convenient for students. They have the option of installing the QLess app on their Android and iOS devices, or they can visit the website of the department they need, from there, the students can view the appointments that are open on the days and during the time frames that work best for their lectures and study schedules. On campuses that don't use QLess, students have to mold their schedules around the administrative employees who wield power over them.
Crowd Control at a Glance
The QLess electronic queuing system has undeniable benefits for students, but it's a revolutionary upgrade for employees and admin officials, too. Unlike the waiting system you may be using now, our software includes the QLess Dashboard. A peek at the dashboard reveals live updates regarding the performances of both staff members and the visitors who come into the office. These real-time updates are lifesavers because they allow employees to keep an eye on their workflow. If there are issues with time management or the office is at risk for falling behind, each employee has the opportunity to check in and correct the problem.
Constant and instant access to the daily schedule naturally leads to an improvement in the quality of service that students receive because the staff can focus on what they're supposed to be doing instead of making up for lost time, redirecting students, or apologizing for unreasonable wait times. On that subject, wait times are shorter when everyone is in-the-know, as well. Utilizing the QLess system in place, staff members have a steady influx of students requiring help, they don't have to wait around to be busy but can allocate all of their resources where they need to be.
Waiting Is a Waste
Waiting is a waste of time. One might contend that it builds character, but one would be hard-pressed to argue that spending over an hour in line to see your advisor or sign up for classes builds anything except resentment. Students don't pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition to spend their time in queue. In the moment they need assistance from their university, they rightfully expect it to occur promptly and at the very least, they feel that it shouldn't disrupt their entire day--and they're correct.
Coeds are thrilled with technology that saves time, an electronic queuing system eliminates the need for them to stand around in an actual queue. QLess allows them to sign up for an appointment online or through the app, they don't have to show up and hope for the best, which places them at risk for missing classes or losing their place in line. No student should have to make a choice like that because when a student chooses to visit the Registrar at noon on a Tuesday, she or he can show up at noon on the dot at an office that uses queue management software. It's unnecessary to wait for someone to become available because an employee is already ready to help. Rather than wasting precious hours for the line to move, a student can study, attend a lecture, get a bite to eat, or complete homework assignments up until they're due to meet a staff member.
Retention Rates Flourish in Organized Environments
Rising student attrition rates are a problem at numerous universities, students don't feel like they're receiving their money's worth, nor are they getting adequate support from college administrations. They're unheard, their time isn't valued, and they're forced to devote too much time to academic bureaucracies which is more than enough to make a coed feel like dropping out of a program or out of school entirely. Due to the implementation of electronic queuing systems, organizational efficiency and time management are enhanced, facilitating increased availability of administrative staff to provide personalized attention to visitors. Consequently, students experience a heightened sense of respect and support, they finally get to focus on academics, not the business of paperwork and standing in a line when they have a hundred other things to do.
A Proactive Approach to Problem-Solving
An electronic queuing system like QLess offers a behind-the-scenes look at visitor behaviors. Through the dashboard, employees can keep an eye on the length of any wait times that remain, as well as how many students are in the lobby or the line at one time. From there, you can also pinpoint how long each service visit lasts; although the system can solve many of your in-office problems, viewing the analytics will allow you to see any other problem areas before they cause a noticeable issue with the level of service provided by your department. If too many students are still left waiting in the office, for example, you can use the data on the dashboard to determine if staff members are taking too long with individual students or if students are arriving unprepared.
An electronic queuing system has the power to enhance the infrastructure of your office. You and your staff will experience improvements from the most fundamental level, beginning with your ability to reach out to students, communicate, and offer unexpected but welcome transparency into the inner workings of your office. Introducing QLess into the applicable departments on campus will result in increased employee morale accompanied by stabilized student services. Your staff can focus on helping students instead of apologizing or attempting to calm down angry or impatient visitors.
As for the coeds, they will have fewer complaints about time crunches because they'll finally have the opportunity to get into the administrative offices they need without being shuffled from person to person or waiting around for hours. Because they feel heard, respected, and valued, they'll have the desire to continue their education, they won't be demotivated. It's time to change the university system. Are you prepared to take the QLess approach? Read our campus without lines whitepaper and learn how to improve campus operations and retention rates.
Universities with an eye toward the future are discovering that it pays to cater to the lives of the student body rather than requiring coeds to do all the heavy lifting by conforming their schedules to fit the administration, their professors, their advisors, and practically everyone else in a position of authority on campus. Students who need to talk to a lecturer, a mentor, a librarian, or an administrator can spend more time waiting than attending class. It's even worse at the beginning and end of the semesters when students scramble to deal with financial aid and reserve their spot in required courses. Understandably, large campuses have equally large crowds and proportionally long lines, but there's no reason to force students to decide between attending a class, lecture, or lab, or holding their place in queue to find out why their financial aid is less than expected. That's why forward-thinking academic institutions are also turning to online appointment booking tools to help them organize their workflow policies and improve the way they assist the student body.
Every spot on campus can result in a crush. Students run into crowded lines at the library, the clinic, and the health services department as well as the registrar and other administrative offices. It can even be difficult to book a meeting with an advisor or a professor in spite of posted office hours; in most cases, coeds have to show up to where they need to be and hope for the best. That's why appointment management software is a must-have. Your university requires a more sophisticated system to address the needs of a student body that thrives on technology and refuses to adapt to a status quo that no longer works. Waiting in lines is literally obsolete with a system that works like the QLess platform.
QLess is more than just an online appointment booking tool. It's a way to give students control of their time while simultaneously providing staff all across the board with a means to improve their organization, preparedness, and time management. No one has to sacrifice anything under this system. Admin employees, professors, and counselors can utilize the software to show their availability with a range of time slots during which they're committed to seeing students. Continue reading to explore how QLess can help your university to evolve for the future of its student body.
Accessibility from Anywhere
Students today live mobile-friendly lives, they prefer to do things online. While they'll happily use their laptops, they favor smartphones and tablets so that they can access information from anywhere. Not only does that call for platforms and websites built using responsive design, but it also strongly suggests that colleges need to ensure their campuses are technologically up-to-date in every department.
An online appointment booking tool offers students the opportunity to reserve appointments from any device. As long as the department uses the software, coeds can visit their website or download the QLess app. They can then schedule meetings with the registrar, their major advisor, or a lab professor. In areas of the school that are often overrun, you can even use the system to keep things in check; for instance, you might consider implementing schedules for the bookstore at the beginning of each semester, or even at the end when students come in to sell back their textbooks.
Complete Customization
QLess is a versatile online appointment booking tool that's open to customization. You can tailor the program to the needs of each department, down to the individual. Academic departments, e.g., the English department, the math department, and so on, can set up scheduling for each professor with a roster of students to advise, counsel, and tutor. Coeds can choose a time that's convenient to them, as can the professors--they only need to input their available hours into the system.
The Financial Aid Office is one place that reaps the advantages of booking software, it's often packed to the brim with students who are understandably anxious and worried. Financial matters are nothing to take lightly, especially when it comes to one's education. Using a cloud-based program to schedule students allows staff to follow a set plan or, alternatively, take students as they arrive. With the help of QLess, someone is always available for incoming visitors who have an appointment; nevertheless, every area of campus has the potential to use online appointment management. You can survey the needs of your departments to decide which ones need help with time management and student satisfaction levels.
Seamless Shuffling of Students
Because our online appointment booking tool is easily customized, you can also maintain a campus-wide account. Tailor the system to ask students to describe the reason for their appointment when they schedule a reservation. With that information, the queue management software can shuffle students to the department that can best handle their problem. Consider adding an option for visitors who know the name for the administrator, professor, or staff member they need to see, in the case of students seeking appointments with their advisors. The system can also handle coeds who don't reserve a time slot. The registrar is sure to have walk-ins no matter what. Instead of sending the daily plan into a tailspin, the system simply fits the newcomer into the first available spot. If an appointment-holder runs late or has to switch to another day, then someone new can slide into that place, as well. Our software takes care of everything, is the main point to take away from this.
Communication Up to the Minute
Another reason the online appointment booking tool is helpful for students is that they no longer have to line up outside the small, over-crowded office they need to visit and wait ... and wait ... and wait. QLess is on the cloud. So is the queue. Once they sign up, students can continue living the campus life. They don't even need to worry about forgetting their appointment because they get caught up in a study session or a Q&A with the professor after class. Our system sends out alerts reminding users of upcoming meetings. If things are behind schedule and reserved time frames fall back, then the system notifies students of that, as well, and informs them when it's safe to arrive at the office.
An Easy User Interface
The process of using the software is simple for students. As long as QLess is in place in the campus network, coeds can begin by registering for the system. Doing so is as easy as visiting a link that you announce on the university site or downloading the QLess app. If your college chooses to install kiosks, then students can register on those, as well. In addition to sharing their name, phone number, and what they need, students can include other details, including the department they're looking for and which times are best for them.
Students have the option to schedule appointments anytime they need once they register. They can sign up for classes, reserve a spot at the clinic or with counseling services, or set up a walk-through during orientation. They can even book a place in the library. Staff members can choose which times they're listed as available, which provides stability for both the staff and the students.
Depending on availability, a student may have to wait an hour, a day, or even a week for an appointment. It shouldn't usually take that long, but it depends on the department and its traffic, as well. The point is that the students know what to expect and when they'll see someone who can help them. They're not stuck in limbo waiting in line or coming back day after day. Staff, including admin and professors, can reach students instantly through our online appointment booking tool. As a result, individual employees can send messages to students they're scheduled to see. They might be able to offer an earlier time slot or let their students know that they're running late.
The value QLess has as an online appointment booking tool is only one of its benefits, the software can change the way your universe works at the most fundamental level. Every department can take advantage of its time management features and organized scheduling. Implementing the platform ensures that the student body is fulfilled, satisfied, and supported by staff across all areas of campus life. At the same time, staff members feel supported as well, because they finally have the tools they need to do their jobs and serve the students effectively. Student retention rates soar as a result, and attrition rates decrease across the board. Coeds are far less likely to drop classes, programs, or the entire idea of attending school at your university. Exhibiting respect for their time will take your campus far.
Ready to dump the queue and launch your school into the future? Find out how to improve your campus operations and retention rates by reading our campus without lines whitepaper.
The college crisis is quickly reaching epic proportions. With some problems, such as professor shortages and soaring tuition rates, administrators are helpless to do much to help the coeds who want to attend their university. As an administrator, however, you can--and should--try to empathize with why students are so frustrated. The introduction of queue management software can go a long way toward improving the college experience for both students and employees, but you have to remain open to the possibilities.
Let's talk about the sources of academic angst among students for a few moments. Can you imagine spending tens of thousands of dollars per semester only to be forced to wait in line for everything? Waiting happens, that's true. Students have been living with it up to this point, just as they've been dealing with the problem of over-crowded classrooms and abominable teacher to student ratios.
The problem is getting worse, though. So many colleges and universities are under-staffed, especially in admin departments, such as the Office of the Registrar, the Admissions Office, and the student services departments. Coeds are having trouble even signing up for classes. Once that time of year rolls around, they arrive on campus to discover long lines and disorganized offices. Trying to prepare their schedules, pay fees, or reserve space in a lab becomes impossible. More and more students find themselves shut out of the courses they need because they were unable to talk to anyone or schedule an appointment.
That's unacceptable. It also illuminates why students are unhappy. If your college experiences high attrition levels and a severe lack of student morale, you need to take a step back. Objectively judge your policies and processes. Do your administrative offices work as effectively and efficiently as they could, or have they fallen victim to a lack of funding and resources? The QLess queue management system could save the day. It's an affordable measure that streamlines the organization in any campus office. Be honest with yourself: can you afford not to improve the way you do business?
The College Experience Via the Cloud
Coeds appreciate cloud technology, which is one advantage that queue management software has over traditional waiting systems that involve taking a number and serving people as they come. The students of today do everything via their laptops and smart devices. The up-and-coming generations don't even take notes the old-fashioned way, they look for their lectures to be transcribed online. Many professors, already understanding the importance of cloud tech as it applies to their teaching duties, already upload lectures and other study materials so that students can access them from anywhere. The odds are high that, on your campus, you see evidence of this. In classrooms, students tap away on laptops and tablets while taking notes. When they peruse the course catalog, they're on their phones.
With all of that in mind, you can see how a queue system can shine. QLess takes the idea of a regular line and sends it into cyberspace. Once your university implements this software for any department or office, students can go onto the department page or install the QLess app. From there, they can see which appointments are open for the day. After making a reservation, they don't have to show up to the office until the appointed time. They don't have to waste valuable hours waiting to see someone. There's no longer any reason for them to choose between attending a class or holding their place in line.
A Drop in Attrition
Attrition refers to the number of students who stop attending classes over the course of a semester or an academic year. While it's true that there are numerous reasons for a coed to drop out of a class or to leave a university altogether, sometimes the way the college operates is the culprit. Some students may have to withdraw because of issues related to health or money problems, but others end up leaving their programs due to the fact that they can't get into the classes they need, or they feel that they're paying too much for what they receive in return.
It's beyond frustrating to get shut out of a class that you need for your major or, worse, to graduate, only to find out that it filled up while you were waiting for an appointment. At that point, there's nothing you can do, which only amplifies the anger. That's what students today feel like when they're forced to deal with over-crowded offices and under-staffed departments.
In contrast, the simple inclusion of queue management software can stop the crushing crowds. With timely appointments neatly scheduled all throughout the day, college administrators and employees don't have to scramble or rush. They can go into the system to see how many students are due on that day. Furthermore, the QLess system itself takes on the responsibility of making sure that there's someone available to help each appointment holder.
Improved Retention of Students
It stands to reason that since the queue management software can decrease attrition rates, it can also improve retention rates. Students are happier and more content when they feel as if their opinions and time are valued. As it stands at too many campuses across the country, students feel like dollar signs. They're made to believe they're nothing more than a means to an end, a way for their college to make money without giving back anything for it. Realizing that they don't have to fight for to see someone in the Registrar's Office is more than enough to soothe their anger and fears.
Fulfilled students want to remain on campus. They're eager to work hard to earn their degrees. The problem occurs when they don't feel heard or respected. There's no reason for coeds who pay tuition to have to make a choice between attending a class and signing up for a new one. They should be able to do both, and neither action should interfere with the other.
Stellar Resource Management
The ability to manage resources in a way that functionally works is another benefit associated with the use of queue management software. Employees are no longer referees for students. They don't have to spend their working hours trying in vain to catch up and force as many students through the door as possible. Instead, with their days neatly organized, they can genuinely help students by answering questions and assisting them with essential tasks, such as signing up for classes, paying laboratory fees, and applying for financial aid.
This has a significant effect on employee morale, as well. Administrators don't enjoy their jobs when they can't actually do them, nor do they enjoy adding to the stress that college students already experience. QLess software decreases the likelihood of burnout among employees because they have a leg up in streamlining their day-to-day appointments. They know what's coming and what they need to do to prepare.
An Interactive World
Coeds and employees both love the queue management software's communication abilities. The system can send out notifications to remind students of their scheduled appointments or to give them a heads up that things are running behind and their meeting will be a bit later. That allows the students to continue with their day instead of showing up and waiting around a crowded office. Students can also send messages back to the office through the system, which is helpful in case they need to reschedule or arrive a bit later in the day. Strong, two-way communication can eliminate wasted time better than anything else. Going a step further, it's easier for students to pose questions or ask about what they need to bring when they use the QLess system. In opening up those lines, both administrators and registered students are happy. The two factions aren't working at odds with each other.
Queue management software seems like a simple solution to a complex problem--and it is. The fact that the solution is simple does not mean that the system isn't revolutionary, however. It bears repeating that today's students live on the cloud. That's where they organize their lives, for the most part. They've gotten used to professors who want them to turn in their assignments that way. They make other appointments via the cloud. It's easy for them to understand and, more importantly, they appreciate the ability to queue up without standing in line. They're happy to keep their appointments as long as they're allowed to make them.
Today's students are responsible, and they take their college careers seriously. Colleges are failing them, however, due to disorganization and poor allocation of resources. QLess is the fix for those issues. It encourages communication, which goes a long way toward improving student attitudes. Are you ready to learn more about a queueless approach? Read our campus without lines whitepaper and discover how to improve college campus operations and retention rates.