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Customer Story
Industry
Higher Education
Headquarters
British Columbia, Canada
Solution
Queue Management, Booking
Comm100 customer
Since August 2024
The University of British Columbia is one of Canada’s top-ranked research universities, consistently placed among the top three in the country. Within UBC, the International Student Advising department carries a mandate that few other campus units share: it is the only team authorized to provide immigration advice to UBC’s international student population.
Led by Lilian Bandeira, Manager of the International Student Advising department, the team of 17 staff is split into two groups. Advising assistants serve as the first point of contact for students and their families, triaging inquiries and determining what level of support each student needs.
When an immigration question requires specialized guidance, students are connected with international student advisors who are regulated Canadian immigration consultants or Regulated International Student Immigration Advisors (RISIAs), legally authorized to provide immigration advice.
The department supports approximately 18,000 international students, along with their family members and other UBC departments that have immigration-related questions. Students can connect with the team both in person at the campus office and online through Zoom, which means the department manages multiple queue lines across different service modes and advisor types.
With frequent shifts in Canadian immigration policy creating spikes in student demand, the department needed a queuing and booking platform that could keep up with unpredictable volumes while giving staff the flexibility to focus on what matters most: the students sitting in front of them.
Before adopting Comm100, the International Student Advising department had already gone through two platform changes in a short period. And the friction from that earlier transition made the prospect of yet another switch feel daunting. But operational pain points with their existing system made staying put increasingly difficult.
The most immediate frustration was the multi-step workflow that their previous vendor required for every student interaction. Before meeting with a student, advisors had to summon them in the platform, then click to “arrive” them, and then remember to end the service once the appointment wrapped up. Each of these steps happened alongside the actual conversation with the student.
For a team whose conversations often involve sensitive and complex immigration matters, requiring full attention and careful listening, these background tasks created a real cognitive burden. Advisors found themselves mentally juggling platform clicks alongside the substance of the conversation itself.
The department also lacked the data it needed to understand its own operations. Without reliable reporting, the team couldn’t answer basic questions about volume patterns, staffing allocation, or seasonal trends.
“We were also looking for a platform to properly record all the interactions and collect data to come up with reporting, so that could also help us understand a bit more about our daily operations and the volumes and the challenges throughout different seasons,” Zhu adds.
Monthly reports had to be compiled manually, with staff exporting numbers and building graphs in Excel. The process was time-consuming and reactive rather than strategic.
The team’s booking workflow didn’t fit the standard model that their previous vendor was built around. In most queuing systems, students book their own appointments. At UBC International Student Advising, the advising assistants book appointments on behalf of students after triaging their needs. This difference in process meant the team needed flexibility from their platform vendor, and they weren’t getting it.
“There were times when we wanted to propose changes and suggest changes to be implemented that they couldn’t do, and then we had to grapple with what are we going to do given that limitation,” recalls Lilian Bandeira, Manager of the International Student Advising department.
Configuration changes with the previous vendor required submitting requests and then waiting, sometimes for a week or more, for a response. The department had little autonomy to adjust messaging, edit notifications, or adapt the platform to their evolving needs.
UBC International Student Advising selected Comm100 Queue Management to replace their existing system, pairing it with Comm100 Booking for appointment scheduling. The combination addressed both their drop-in queuing needs and their appointment-based advising workflows in a single platform.
The virtual queue transformed the student experience from the ground up. UBC International’s previous platform offered queuing and notifications, but it required students to provide a phone number to join the queue or book an appointment, which created friction in the sign-up process.
With Comm100, the team has full control over which fields are required and can customize the language and notifications students see on their end. Students can now join the queue with minimal information, receive updates by phone or email as their turn approaches, and use that waiting time however they want.
“We wanted a platform that’s easy to navigate, very intuitive for students to jump on the queue and be able to grab a coffee, walk around the campus, maybe work on their homework while they’re waiting to connect with our advising assistants,” Bandeira explains.
Students could also remove themselves from the queue if they needed to, and the system managed multiple queue lines so the department could route students to in-person sessions, Zoom meetings, or advisor-specific queues depending on the nature of their inquiry.
For advisors, the workflow improvement was immediate. The summon-arrive-end service process that had burdened every interaction under their previous vendor was eliminated. Advisors could now focus entirely on the student in front of them.
“It removed some steps that used to be needed before and allowed the team to really focus on the interaction that was happening with the student,” Bandeira notes.
One of the implementation challenges that surfaced early was the department’s non-standard use of the booking system. Because advising assistants book appointments on behalf of students rather than students booking for themselves, the standard Comm100 Booking configuration didn’t initially align with the team’s process.
Rather than asking the department to change how they worked, the Comm100 onboarding team spent multiple sessions exploring workarounds, testing configurations, and presenting alternatives until the right setup was in place.
“We really had that time and space to thoroughly discuss that challenge with Maria and the other onboarding team members. We felt really grateful to have a knowledgeable onboarding team that was able to help us navigate this customization,” Zhu recalls.
The extended trial period gave the team room to test different approaches in a live environment before committing to a final configuration, which meant the full team could be trained on a process that had already been validated.
The department had planned a two-week overlap period where both the old and new platforms would run simultaneously. That backup plan turned out to be unnecessary.
The onboarding followed a phased approach. Initial kickoff sessions focused on understanding the department’s structure, use cases, and timelines. Training was delivered in layers: first to Bandeira and Zhu as key stakeholders, then through a train-the-trainer session so the team could onboard future staff independently, and finally direct training for the broader team.
“The training was really great. Everyone found it seamless,” Bandeira reports.
Check-in meetings started at nearly every other day around the launch window, then moved to weekly, biweekly, and now monthly as the team settled into steady-state operations. That tapering cadence gave the department confidence that support was always available without creating meeting fatigue.
“It’s been really great to have the flexibility and knowing that we are not alone in navigating this even after we make the switch,” Zhu adds.
What distinguished the Comm100 partnership for this team was the responsiveness to feedback. Staff who suggested improvements to the platform saw those changes reflected in subsequent updates, and that visibility built trust across the department.
Because Comm100 also works with several other UBC departments, best practices and feedback from sister teams were shared across units, helping break down the operational silos that are common in large universities.
The most telling outcome was what didn’t happen: there was no transition pain. The department went live on Comm100 without needing the two-week backup period they had planned, and staff reported no disruption to their workflows.
“The fact that our team internally didn’t notice an obvious disruption in their workflow really speaks volumes to how easy and stress-free this process has been for us,” Zhu says.
This was particularly significant given the team’s recent experience transitioning between two previous vendors, which had been considerably more difficult and left staff feeling uncertain about new technology.
Advisors, freed from the manual summon-arrive-end workflow, responded with immediate enthusiasm. For team members whose work requires deep listening during sensitive immigration conversations, the reduction in background administrative tasks made a real difference.
“I would hear from time to time, they’re saying, ‘Oh my gosh, this is amazing. I can see how beneficial it has been to the team.’ Having this new platform is so intuitive,” Bandeira shares from her one-on-ones with advisors.
Roman Kohut, an Advising Coordinator who joined the team after the Comm100 transition, experienced the platform without any prior context. His take confirmed the intuitive design: “For me it was quite an intuitive platform to navigate. Things seem to flow seamlessly.”
Support staff who were given admin access to view reporting similarly found the system accessible without formal training, reinforcing how quickly new team members can get up to speed.
With Comm100’s dashboard and reporting tools, the department now tracks daily volumes, identifies peak days, and uses that data to inform staffing decisions and vacation scheduling.
“The dashboard function gives us an idea of how many students have been served every day. At the end of the day, I can look at the data and see, ‘Oh, today we were able to serve 25 students.’ That alone has helped us map out when we’re getting busier. We’ve now learned that Mondays and Fridays are very busy days for us,” Bandeira explains.
Monthly reports that previously required manual Excel work can now be exported directly from Comm100 in graph, PDF, or table formats, saving the team time and giving them presentation-ready data for stakeholder meetings. Comm100’s custom reporting also lets the department tailor reports to their specific metrics, and automated scheduled reporting means those monthly numbers arrive by email without anyone needing to log in.
The department has also discovered that Zoom appointments are increasingly preferred over in-person visits, a finding that is helping them rethink how they allocate resources across service modes. On a campus as large as UBC’s, students who might not make the walk to the advising office are now connecting because virtual access removes that barrier.
Bandeira noted that the platform works well for both staff members with varying levels of comfort with technology and for students who represent a different generation of users entirely.
“I can testify that the platform has helped multi-generation staff and students, and it has been great for them to just know what to do, where to go, and be able to get the services that they need at the time that they need,” Bandeira says.
UBC International Student Advising’s partnership with Comm100 continues to evolve. The department is currently planning to embed a student satisfaction survey into the final notification that students receive after their appointment, which will give the team direct feedback to guide future process improvements.
The team also recognizes that they’ve only scratched the surface of what the platform offers. Features like AI Agent and additional channels remain available for future exploration as the department’s needs grow.
When asked what they would say to another institution considering Comm100, the team didn’t hesitate.
“If you are looking for a one-stop solution for multiple needs like queue management, booking, and also dashboard and reporting, we really find that Comm100 is that one place that has multiple features that meets multiple needs,” Zhu says.
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