Lapland UAS, MTI and the University of Lapland: students rush to the lunch restaurants in small groups, laughing and talking. Nothing seems unusual. However, a long-expected change has come about in the middle of all the hassle: the DAS pop up office. Customer Advisors Aki and Juho have had a remote office in the Rantavitikka campus area for three days now and people have had the chance to come up to them to talk about apartments, check their application status, or just take cleaning cloths or microfiber cloths that are on the pop up office table.
The DAS information systems and computers have been updated in the end of 2017 and in the beginning of this year. This has enabled, after years of waiting, us to handle customer service face-to-face with our customers even outside our office. In the past, DAS has also participated in different fairs but back then, we have not been able to use our customer software remotely. However, now it is possible.
We aim to broaden our services with the pop up office and land where the students are – the campuses. Even though we did not witness a rush of customers during the first few times, the need for mobile and remote services is clear. Our customer feedback has called for flexibility in office hours because the responders have felt visiting our office during lecture breaks rather inconvenient. DAS pop up office is a reaction to two points: the remote office is placed in the schools and academies outside our regular office hours close to the students, so that the students have more time to sort out questions related to their apartments without visiting our office separately.
Office-based customer visitations are still an integral part of our services but based on the first trials on pop up offices they seem to provide a platform for even more comprehensive services. Mobile and wireless services enable for example - if we can attract other organisations that are important to the students such as Kela and the school administration - students to take care of multiple things in the same place at the same time without the need to visit each organisation separately.
Juho thought that the pop up office brought refreshing change to his workday. Working in a completely different environment for a few hours was especially nice since customers could just stop by to talk about their questions related to apartments and then conveniently continue to go for lunch or to class. On the other hand, some passers-by did not seem to have heard of the chance to take care of their apartment business completely remotely now. Aki mainly agrees. He also found increasing the accessibility of our services with the pop up office positive.
In summary, Juho and Aki are saying that the pop up office has a lot of potential and it helps reaching our customers even better. Customer encounters at the campuses are nice and relaxed. The next goal is to make more people aware of our pop up offices and the opportunities of taking care of questions related to our apartments even more conveniently with us at the campus.