Here in Dubai and all around the UAE the schools, colleges, universities and other educational establishments are far advanced and technologically superior comparing to other regions of Gulf and MENA. The government and education ministries are proactively taking measures to improve the educational system of the country. The schools themselves are eager to improve the environment to promote education and healthy growth of the pupils. However, attending classes and working on assignments is not the only task a student will have to do at school, college or university, in fact the student might have to deal with several other matters too. For all such matters, related to admission, accounts, sports and other offices, the students usually visit the front office of any such department, where they are served. Usually these departments and offices doesn’t have any queue management, it would be just a first come first served based service operations which means mostly the queue are not managed or managed manually. The schools and other educational establishment must use a digital queue management system to save time of the students and to improve service quality.
Manual queue management or poorly managed queues not only make it complicated but also result in longer wait time. Which put extra strain on your students and the staff as well. Students have limited time in the day, if they will have to visit any office or department to avail a service or for any other matter, they might have to take permission from their teachers to skip the class or else they will have to do it in their free period or spare time, which is always very short. However, this could make them more anxious and it is hard to deliver a satisfactory service to anxious customers. Sometimes the student might have to leave midway due to any important class or other activity, which means they will have to visit again later. On top of that due to poorly managed queues, the service staff might also have to work double, or even more to manage everything, which make them unsatisfied too and results in poor quality service. Such scenarios not only cause issues for the students but also damage school’s reputation and eventually parent and students both could get fed up and they might move to another school as well.
Let us see how a digital queue management system can solve a lot of problems and improve the service quality.
Which Departments at a School can Benefits from a Queue Management System?
Here in Dubai and all around the UAE the educational system is very advanced and modernized, it is designed to meet all international standards and it is far superior then other MENA regions. In schools, collages, and educational establishments the queues are not only common in admission offices or student offices, in fact there are several other places where queues can form. The biggest problem is overlapping schedules which made it difficult for students, teachers and faculty members to manage several activities. Here is a generic list of most common functions form a standard school in UAE which can benefit from a digital queue management system:
- Admission Offices
- Student Affairsand Sport Offices
- Testing Centers and Facilities
- Study Rooms and Libraries
- Accounts and Financial Aid Offices
- Computer and Science Labs
- Dining, Presentation and Conference Halls
- Student Success Offices
These are just the few most commonly found sections and departments of a school however, there could be several more departments where a centralized queue management system can be implemented to facilitate the visitors and to maximize the performance of the department as well.
Queue Management System Reduce Waiting Time
Whenever someone talk about a queue management system the waiting time or wait time is one of the most beneficial advantage of it. In case of schools, colleges, universities and other education institutions the students are already occupied with very busy schedule, whether it is back to back lectures, labs, home works, or any other activity the schools can be very time consuming and tiresome. The last thing any student wants is to end up in a long queue without knowing how much time it will take. On top of that the pressure of next activity/task could make student anxious and stressed out. This results in poor experience. The staff also have to do additional work while manually managing the queues, which can distract them form their primary tasks and results in delays and longer time for the service delivery. However, a queue management system can streamline the student flow and automate the journey, which significantly reduce the wait time. The staff can also focus on their primary tasks and expedite the service delivery process. Overall all these benefits lead to a very quicker and smoother service delivery.
Queue Management System Improve Service Quality
With the aid of a queue management system the schools, colleges, universities and other educational institutes can significantly improve their service quality. The queue management system automates the student flow and various student/customer journey steps which not only reduce the overall wait time but also help staff focus more on their primary tasks. When the students are served immediately or relatively quickly the stress due to wait factor can be significantly minimized, which help students get more time to communicate with the staff. Since the staff also don’t have to focus on queuing or any other task, they can also give more time to students and focus better on their problems. This have huge impact on service quality and help management improve service quality and student/customer experience. Furthermore the queue management systems also collect data and monitor staff performance which help management to utilize resources more effectively and help them improve the performance of the department.
Queue Management System Improve Student Experience
Another main cause of building stress and discomfort among students is the experience they are getting. It doesn’t matter if it is student enrollment and admission department or if it is student affairs office, the student experience matters equally across all functions. Students can have a variety of different needs and quires some of them can be straightforward and some can be complex. Usually with the manual queues, the school management have appoint a main reception with one or two staff. Who are the very first interaction with the students, students will have to form queues to reach to the counter or reception. Then they ask some basic questions about their needs and direct them to the correct person to assist them further. However, this could be a very time consuming tasks. However, with the help of a queue management system the students can be provided with a ticket dispensing kiosk which provides an intuitive UI (user interface) and allow students to interact with the system with a touch screen.
The students can choose the right options and they can also answers some questions to further clarify their need. This way the queue management system can automatically route each student to the right department. This not only improve student flow but it also help the staff to improve their service quality and offer a better solution to the student’s needs. The queue management systems can take decisions in real-time and also help school management in implementing their strategies and policies. All these feature help improving the student experience and also improve the service quality.
Queue Management System Offers Better Control and Monitoring
The biggest advantage of any digital solution is that it can capture a lot of valuable business intelligence data. Control and monitoring are the two key aspects of better management. If a school want to improve its internal business processes or any other business wants to make improvements they need to be able to identify the area of improvement and gain more control over internal processes and all the mechanics that is impacting on that particular subject. For instance if the school management wants to improve the student enrollment and admission department, they first will have to be able to gain better control and ability to move things from their organic way to according to their strategy. This can only be achieved if the school management is capable of closely monitoring each and every moving part that is involved in the targeted business process.
A queue management system is a very capable tool which can collect system usage stats and analytical data from each and every touch point of the student/customer journey. Which makes it a great companion for the management who wants to keep improving their performance and efficiency. The queue management collects queuing data and staff performance KPIs to provide management a deeper insight to their queuing process. For example, average and individual waiting time, service delivery time, employee performance such as average and each service time, pre-service preparation time, post-service tasks, busy hours, busy days, etc. Such data help management understand the queuing process and identify the areas of improvements. This way the management can get highly accurate and actionable reports which can be incorporated in the policy making and strategy building process to achieve the performance goals.
The management can also effectively utilize resources at their full potential with such information which help them optimize performance. The performance management enable a business to improve productivity, reduce cost, and maximize efficiency.
Mobile Queuing and Virtual Queuing can Have Huge Impact on Student Satisfaction
Schools, colleges, universities and other educational establishment can leverage the modern technologies to further improve their queuing processes. For example, the mobile queuing and virtual queuing are two modern and most effective features of a queue management system. These days the smartphones have become an essential for everyone, whether students, professionals or parents. Here in Dubai and all around the UAE almost 99% of population is using mobile phones. People tend to spend hours on their smartphones, this is what compelled businesses to focus more on smartphone based interactions and facilitate their customers by offering them mobile phone portals, responsive websites, and smartphone applications. Schools can utilize queue management system smartphone applications, SMS, online student/parent portals, website appointment booking and such digital channels to allow the students and parents to utilize virtual queuing to save more time.
The virtual queuing allow students and parent to sign-up remotely for the queue, instead of coming at the relevant office and wait in the long queues, they can sign-up remotely and get notified when their turn come.The queue management system allow several digital channels to sign-up for the queues, it keep informing the students, parents and visitors about the on-going queuing and send them automated alerts and notifications to inform them about their turn. This help them to arrive only at the time of their turn hence the wait time can be reduced to absolutely none. No need to stand in long lines, or spare hours to get a simple service or paperwork, everyone get served instantly as they arrived, so no chances of crowd, congestion or the problems inherited by a manual queuing. Furthermore it significantly improve staff performance. When the staff worked under a balanced workload their morale and motivation rise and they tend to perform better. Hence schools can significantly improve their queuing process.
How Poor Queue Management is Impacting Schools and Students in Dubai, UAE?
The long queues and frequent complaints about waiting or poor quality service will eventually push your students out of the school. Parents who are sending their kids in a school, college or university are expecting from the educational establishments to provide high quality service and a better environment where the students stay focused on their studies and healthy activities rather wasting time in waiting lines and complaining about the staff for poor service. Students might not file an official complaint to the administration, especially the youngsters, but they tend to discuss everything with their parents. Which led them to believe that the school might not be treating them well and raise concerns about the education quality as well. This could be very harmful for any school, once your reputation is damaged it take tremendous efforts to repair it and build a trusted name again. Here in Dubai and all other cities of UAE mostly the school districts are separate, where usually 5 to 10 schools are available and in some cases even more. It is a lot easier for students and parents to switch school. So, poor queue management could have long term impact on a school and its growth.
Moreover when schools, colleges, universities and educational establishment doesn’t focus on their queuing processes and student journey. It also impact the students and their performance too. If you think from a student’s prospective the long wait time can build stress, could also cause them to skip classes or other activities which can have long lasting bad impact. Eventually the students also get tired of such things and start considering changing the school. In the modern world of social media, students tend to post about their schools and educational institutes over the social media and internet. Which is also an important aspect of branding and brand image. Moreover the schools usually think that the admission and student enrollment is once-a-year activity, so it might not have any impact. However, that is not true, the student admission whether schools, colleges, universities or any other educational institute, it is very critical because it is the very first interaction for new comers. If a school fails to build a good first impression, then they might lose the student which can have long term impact on the business as well.
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Conclusion
Schools, colleges, universities and educational establishments tend to invest huge in improving their education quality and facilitating the students but they often neglect the queue management which is a crucial part of student experience and have huge impact on the brand image and reputation. Poor queue management can impact students and portray a bad image of the institution. Especially for the admission and parents interaction can have very negative impact on the business if the schools don’t proactively improve their queuing processes and queue management. Let us just admit, no one likes long waiting lines, for example if you keep waiting for long time at a bank, a time will come when you will think about changing your bank just because of this inconvenience and bad service experience. Same is the case for the schools, colleges, universities and educational institutions. That is why schools must have to adopt to modern queuing processes and technologies to keep students and parents satisfied. The queue management systems also help schools to improve the staff efficiency. Smart resource management help optimizing cost and improving productivity.
A queue management system can have huge impact on your internal processes, staff productivity, student/parent experience and more importantly brand name and reputation. RSI Concepts is a leading queue management system provider in Dubai, UAE. If you want to learn more about the subject or if you want us to help you school, college, university or educational institute to improve their queuing process, please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.
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