Manchester Metropolitan University Revolutionizes the Student Experience with Qmatic

Student Hubs with 250,000 annual visits

Manchester Metropolitan University is a great, modern university, with roots in higher education that date back to 1824. Located in the global city of Manchester, Manchester Met works closely with partners, businesses, the community, and academic peers – locally, nationally, and internationally.

With 5,000 employees, 38,000 students, and more than 1,000 undergraduate, postgraduate, and professional courses, Manchester Met educates and trains large numbers of legal and business professionals, scientists, engineers, teachers, health workers, and creative professionals. The university recruit ambitious students from all backgrounds and inspire and support them to achieve and have more than 300,000 alumni across the world, and around a further 10,000 new graduates join this community each year.

The University is investing in the future, with a £400m investment program in academic buildings, student residences, the public realm, and IT systems, and the development of a new creative hub for Arts and Humanities is well underway. The University also plans to open an exciting new Institute of Sport, which will bring together sporting expertise from across the University, delivering world-class education and research for our students.

From old-school queuing to a modernized student experience

As part of a £400m investment program into the university, Manchester Met chose to team up with Qmatic to revolutionize its Student Services – the Student Hub. The Student Hubs deal with various student inquiries, such as Accommodation, Coursework, Enrollment, Fees, Timetables, Moodle, ID Cards, and specialist student support. With over 250,000 visits to the Student Hubs each year, 7,000 on a weekly basis, the Student Hub is a vital part of the student journey at the university.

The student services at Manchester Metropolitan University were scattered across the campus and needed to be brought together for a more rounded student experience. The students also had to undertake an “old school” style of queuing at desks or kiosks for an undisclosed period of time, at the required service.

There was also a lack of data available to the University regarding types of student inquiries, the length of time they had to wait for a service, and the time in which their inquiries were resolved. In the University’s ambition to move forward, providing innovative and student-focused services that kept pace with student expectations, a modernized way to enhance the student journey needed to be developed.

Creating a seamless student journey for 38,000 students

In response to student feedback about the type of service they would like: more relaxed, faster service, more flexible, more efficient, and less queuing, a decision was made to invest in physical and technological solutions, i.e., state-of-the-art hub spaces with a virtual queuing system. The University turned to Qmatic to deliver the perfect customer journey management for their environment. This would give advisers working on the Student Hubs more control over their workloads, provide actual data on queuing times, and allow students to be transferred to different services seamlessly, never losing sight of them during this process. It was a way of responding to the modern expectations of customers and students and how they would like to access services within the University.

Live data, average waiting and transaction times, and user feedback

Currently, the Student Hubs are dealing with approximately 7,000 visits a week, with Qmatic providing live data of the state of queuing within the hub spaces. The Student Hub staff can see what services the students are interacting with, look at average waiting and transaction times, and determine how many enquiries are being dealt with at the student’s initial inquiry, which was one of the objectives of the new hub service. This capability allows hub managers to see whether they need to move resources across the hub sites in response to demand, such as hub advisers. It also allows the various specialist services within the hub to work more holistically as one service and managers to recognize individuals who receive outstanding feedback from the users.

"We are currently in the early days of implementation, but we are excited about the data that we are collecting, the enthusiasm of the staff working with the product, and the feedback we are receiving from our students about a more relaxed queuing experience. Qmatic have been supportive, particulary in the run up to launching the product and when we have requested changes based on user feedback."

Will smith, Student Journey Manager, Manchester Metropolitan University