Student Roost is one of the leading providers of student accommodation in the UK, and as such they have a large portfolio of building and amazing staff to manage it.

Brandon, a Customer Service Advisor at Student Roost has to do so much more than simply staff the reception. While he can be found at the front of house, he’s roles include sales, managing the student experience, student wellbeing, maintenance requests and of course managing parcels! The latter of these used to be a major time drain as he would have to manage anywhere from 50 to 150 packages daily. With around 2-4 hours of his day spent handling deliveries, Brandon fighting an uphill battle to provide the value added service that has underpinned Student Roost’s growth!

Before Parcel Tracker

Before the roll-out of Parcel Tracker, the package manage process was manual, paper-based and time consuming.

1. A batch of parcels would be delivered to the reception by a carrier,
2. The front of house staff would then individually record each parcel into a paper ledger and send out an email notification manually to each student notifying them that their deliveries are ready to collect.
3. The students come down to collect the parcel and sign on the paper ledge their parcels were collected.

While at face value this may seem as a simple process, recording each delivery by hand is an extremely tedious process especially when replicated over 50 times. The same goes for sending out emails, imagine having to send out 50-100 emails every day in addition to all the other work you are required to do.

Improving the student experience

Parcel Tracker automated what was previously a very manual process. Brandon can now simply snap a photo of a parcel using the Parcel Tracker mobile application and the application would automatically detect who the package is for and send them a notification to come and collect it. When the student comes to collect their parcel, Brandon can scan the QR code on the student’s email notification and handout their delivery.

What previously took a few minutes per parcels only takes a few seconds with the help of Parcel Tracker. This has freed upsignificant time for Brandon and the other CSAs and operations teams to work on value added services. The teams can focus on organising events, responding to maintenance requests faster and spending more time interacting with students.

“Parcel Tracker has had a significant impact on our parcel management processes. What was once a laborious manual task that took an inordinate amount of time is now a quick streamlined process that has allowed our teams to focus on other business areas. Most importantly, it has notably improved the experience for our customers who no longer have to wait in queues while we ascertain whether a parcel has arrived or not.” - Greg S,  Business Improvement Manager

‍

Every time a student receives a parcel there is a “Christmas effect”; a very positive interaction between Student Roost the student, one that Parcel Tracker helps capture consistently. Parcel Tracker digitises the parcel management process and ensures that parcels are handled in a timely, consistent and professional manner.

Parcels increase but storage space doesn’t

Online shopping has been increasing around 20% year on year and Student Roost have felt this increase first hand as the number of deliveries seem to never stop increasing. Unfortunately, the storage space they haveis limited, hence the speed at which students collect their parcels is paramount. With Parcel Tracker notification are sent out faster, the email deliverability is over 99.99% and reminders are sent if students do not collect their packages on time. These factors all work to together to increase speed at which parcels are collected and the effective size of the mailroom.  

Built for large portfolios

Parcel Tracker was purposefully built for PBSA and property managers that operate multiple sites and need the ability to quickly view their entire portfolio and administer it through a single dashboard.

Deploying the large Student Roost portfolio on Parcel Tracker was fast and simple. The Parcel Tracker team coordinated with the Student Roost IT team, uploaded a list of all the sites and front of house staff using excel documents onto the system. Once the buildings were setup, Parcel Tracker set up remote training session for each building and onboarded the teams over a 40 minute call zoom call. Parcel Tracker was built to be intuitive and Student Roost’s teams were able to pick up and use the system quickly.  

“I would recommend Parcel Tracker to any accommodation provider currently struggling with effectively managing the volume of parcel deliveries.” - Greg S,  Business Improvement Manager

‍

‍