University of Cincinnati reduces Family Weekend wait times by 83% using Event Check-In
Whitney White, Dy'Mand Montgomery, and Caitlin Borges of the University of Cincinnati Parent and Family programs team show off their new bling after a successful Family Weekend.
Like at most schools, Family Weekend at the University of Cincinnati is one of the institution’s most anticipated events. We all know the story for Family Programs offices: print out the spreadsheets, equip your team with a myriad of highlighters and markers, and prepare for impact.
The University of Cincinnati has used CampusESP’s Family Communication solution since 2019 to engage families of current students and promote activities and events like Family Weekend … perhaps they could do even more with it? In Fall 2023, UC used CampusESP for Event Management to host registrations and manage attendees. After Fall 2023, UC worked with us to build and launch Event Check-In, a brand-new feature designed to handle the complexities of attendee check-in at large-scale events.
And for Fall 2024, they piloted this new feature. The result? A significant reduction in wait times (from more than an hour to less than 10 minutes!), smoother check-in experiences, and enhanced overall event satisfaction.
To celebrate our collaboration with UC Parent and Family Programs in building Event Check-In — which has since been enabled by more than 50 additional CampusESP customers, we’re excited to announce the University of Cincinnati as our “ESP MVP” winner for Q3 2024!
From concept to reality, a seamless check-in experience for families
Following 2023’s Family Weekend, UC’s team approached CampusESP with a clear request: they needed a way to simplify the check-in process for their events. Their vision was a digital tool that would allow families to check in quickly, without the hassle of long lines and paper lists.
Whitney White, Director, Parent & Family Programs at University of Cincinnati said, “Families were waiting up to an hour just to check in. We knew we had to find a better solution, especially as registration continued to grow.”
CampusESP was up for the challenge and focused on delivering these new check-In capabilities in time for the next Family Weekend season. By March 2024 CampusESP had a design ready to review. Once the initial designs were shared with UC, we took feedback to refine the feature, and by June the feature was built, enabled, and ready for testing.
And who better to help test it than UC? This past August, they gave the feature a test run during new student move-in to ensure the system was ready to handle large volumes of attendees. That’s 9 months from request to feature launch!
What is CampusESP Event Check-in?
A free part of the CampusESP platform and available to all customers, CampusESP for Event Management allows institutions to promote events, create event registration forms (with or without payment processing), and tailor communications to families leading up to the event. With the expansion to include Event Check-In, the feature now also allows you to:
Deliver and scan personalized QR codes (or search for registrants) with ease
View important registration details at the point of check-in (think T-shirt purchases and sizing)
Access real-time check-in stats and tracking
Processing onsite registrations for last-minute attendees
Dramatically reduced wait times, increased satisfaction
During their 2024 Family Weekend, the impact of CampusESP’s Event Check-In feature was immediately clear. With 1,554 families registered — a 44% jump from the previous year — UC was able to check-in over over 4,000 attendees without any issues.
“This feature changed the game for us,” said Caitlin Borges, Assistant Director, Parent & Family Programs. “In 2022, families were waiting in line for 1-3 hours to check-in for Family Weekend on Friday afternoon. We are proud to say that on Friday afternoon this year, the average time that a family waited in line was 90 seconds. We are still in shock!”
According to White, no family waited more than 10 minutes to check-in.
“Our volunteers – new and seasoned – were absolutely astonished at our new process and short line. They felt like the process was easy to learn and use,” said Borges. “This didn’t surprise us at all, but there was one thing that did: the number of volunteers who said, ‘This is FUN!’ because they were able to spend their energy interacting with families instead of stressing about the line. The process was so easy for our volunteers that it even allowed our team members to step away and finish up last minute tasks before Family Weekend.”
While Family Weekend is University of Cincinnati's main event of the year, we've seen customers use Event Check-In to support Family Orientation, welcome events, family advisory board events, convocations, and more. UC is thinking big on how to expand use, too.
“We will definitely use this feature for future events,” shared Borges. “We invite families back to campus for a spring sporting event and we will use the Event Check-In feature there as well. We are also working on how to use this for care package pickup in the future. We love to get creative with our use of CampusESP!”
Congratulations again to the University of Cincinnati for winning our Q3 2024 ESP MVP Award, and special thanks to Whitney, Dy’Mand, and Caitlin for being true partners through the entire process!