Uppsala Municipality’s financial support unit has an average of 300 visitors a day. The unit has approximately 130 employees where four of them work the reception area
“We previously had a simple queuing system with one line for all visitors, which meant long waiting times for many of them,” said Sanela Zuna, Unit Head at Uppsala Municipality’s financial support unit. It was the same line even if you were just letting someone know you had arrived for a booked appointment.
Not only were visitors required to check in for a booked time but reception would also have to call their case worker. “And case workers would often have to unnecessarily go look for visitors who hadn’t shown up,” said Sanela. The same line applied even for visitors who simply needed help on the computers with electronic applications. Sanela also mentions that they wanted to be able to access statistics on the number of visitors per day/week and waiting times to help them plan receptionist schedules. “We also wanted to know how many visitors we have per service. More than a year ago, we implemented electronic applications for financial support, and it’s our ambition that as many clients as possible apply electronically. So it’s of great interest for us to stay up-to-date of the situation,” said Sanela
The solution is a combined queuing system and self-service kiosk from Qmatic that supports a number of languages. The self-service kiosk provided by Qmatic allows users to check in easily to booked meetings. Visitors needing other services can select the appropriate service and take a queue ticket. Staff are notified by e-mail/text message when visitors arrive. Above each reception station, a monitor clearly displays the number being served. The office has also been equipped with three information monitors that show the current queuing status and other general visitor information. Uppsala Municipality also chose to invest in the Connect Agent mobile app. This app allows staff to use their phones to call in their next visitor and clearly shows the number that is being served.
Connect Agent allows staff to stand by the computers and quickly and easily help those who need help submitting an electronic application. They can also keep track of the queuing situation directly from their phone. And last, but not least, Uppsala Municipality has also gained access to the statistics they wanted.
Sanela and her staff are happy with the combined queuing and self-service check-in system. “It’s a great, modern system that contributes to our digital progress. It reduces the burden on reception because it separates lines by different types of services. The case workers were thrilled when they heard they would receive a text/e-mail notification when their visitors arrived. Now they don’t need to go looking for them anymore,”
said Sanela, “And we now have access to all the statistics we wanted. We get a good overview of the number of visitors and waiting times,” Sanela stated.
Sanela would absolutely recommend this solution to other municipalities and particularly highlights how good the language solution is. “Everything has worked smoothly throughout the whole project,” Sanela ends.
