Customer Story: Brigham Young University
If you visit BYU’s campus in Provo, Utah during early to mid spring (which just so happens to be when we are writing this blog), you’ll see bursts of colorful daffodils, tulips, and sprawling green lawns. Birds will be chirping, students bustling around, and the faintest smell of “it’s almost the end of the school year” energy will be wafting through the air. Even if you graduated 30 years ago, you know the feeling. However, there hasn’t always been such high vibes on the Cougar’s campus.
In the fall of 2020, BYU was trying to solve the same problem as most other universities at the time - students were coming back to campus in the wake of COVID-19. An unprecedented conundrum. Social distancing, mask wearing, and other precautions were still going to be very much a part of the university’s day to day as safety and COVID compliance were top concerns. The ID center, led by Rachel Engler, desperately needed a way to spread out the process of capturing photos and distributing their ID cards without moving their equipment around or hiring more staff. In order to accomplish this, it was critical that their solution allowed IDs to be created before the students even arrived on campus.
Prior to implementing RemotePhoto, BYU had tried to shorten their long ID Center lines by encouraging students to come to campus and get their ID cards as much in advance of the school year as possible. You can imagine how this went…asking 18 - 19 year olds to give up a day during their last summer before college to wait for their ID photo? No thank you. Even students who lived nearby waited til they arrived on campus for orientation to go through the ID card process. Rachel knew there wasn’t enough buy-in to this option to work through COVID, so a new solution was needed.
Although there were a few hesitations before totally committing, the main one being whether students would actually submit photos early enough for pre-printing cards, BYU decided to move forward with RemotePhoto as its online photo submission solution.
Rachel and her team’s first impression of RemotePhoto’s software was that it worked very well and was extremely easy to use, both for staff and students. However, the ID photos they were receiving were still missing the mark! By making their photo requirements more precise within their unique organization, they were able to achieve improved quality in the photos their office received. Our AI has also improved along the way, making sure every photo aligns with the university’s requirements. RemotePhoto’s background removal tool has also been a huge help in getting quality photos that can be used right off the bat. Since implementing this tool, the ID Center has increased its first photo approval percentage by 15%.
Fast forward to after the pandemic, and Rachel’s team was able to pre-print a little over 2,800 ID cards for students and hand them off to campus housing for distribution before any of the students had arrived on campus. That’s 2,800 students who never had to go to Rachel’s office. 2,800 fewer bodies standing in another line to get their ID card. This number was a great start for the ID Center and they’re hoping to get all students to use OPS to meet their photo deadline in the future.
This story is not just about numbers, it also demonstrates the ID center’s care and concern for their staff and students. During the height of COVID, using RemotePhoto allowed BYU to make mask wearing a requirement at all times which improved the comfort of many faculty and student groups on campus. They also gave control over personal image back to their students. With RemotePhoto, students could submit a photo that they actually liked. Stellar selfie? You got it. Sunkissed vacation pic? No problem. Well…as long as it fit BYU’s photo requirements. But you get what we’re saying - students are concerned about their image and the ID Center allowed them to feel good about the photo that would represent them for the next 4 years.
Additionally, spreading out the work of approving ID photos weeks before their busiest times has improved not only ID card distribution speed, but upped student satisfaction levels while decreasing ID Center stress during peak busy periods. It all adds up to an improved student experience and fewer headaches for the staff. We love that!
