Students can now be notified by phone when their number is called

George Brown College is developing a new mobile-friendly process to help make accessing the student services desk more convenient.

“The system is already there and it will now ask if you would like to receive a text message, and as you enter your phone number, it will send you a text letting you know how you have progressed in the line,” said Gerard Hayes, director of student life. “So you can simply go grab yourself a cup of coffee and wait.”

With information from student satisfaction surveys, the college worked together with Qmatic, a software company, to install the system designed to help students get through the line quicker when they are at the welcome desk of student services.

According to a document from Qmatic, some of the benefits of this service will be that students can join the queue before they get to school, and users will know in advance if the services they are looking for are available at the student services desk.

“We installed a text messaging system in September that went through testing, it’s called a customer flow system which was developed for us by Qmatic,” said Hayes.

Hayes explained that students are not using the text service much right now because student services is not busy. As the winter semester approaches, he is confident that the text service will be used more.

“The next part of that is phase two, which is the smart phone application and they’re working on the app as we speak.”

Hayes said that if all goes well, the new app will be ready in January.

“I’m excited because this system allows you to wait and go over and sit at Tim Hortons, while we remind you of your place in the ticket queue,” said Hayes. “The beauty of it is that if you know that you are an hour away from school you can book a ticket ahead so it’s very convenient.”