Customers' expectations of meeting room booking system

Abstract

           The process of booking a meeting room in a large-scale organization or a university hospital is normally made via a phone call or direct contact with the responsible officer in order to check the availability of a meeting room. Most service users expect an immediate response as to whether a meeting room is available or not. In some cases, meeting coordinators wish to check meeting room availability schedules outside normal working hours, however, the person responsible for taking bookings is unavailable or has left the office for the day; thus the service users have to contact the responsible officer the next day, causing the service users to experience inconvenience and difficulty booking a meeting room.  The meeting room booking system should be more user-friendly, by giving the ability meeting coordinators to easily access meeting room availability status rapidly in order to take a venue for a meeting in an efficient manner.

           This study aims to understand the expectation of the service users towards the meeting room booking system by means of the qualitative research and ethnographic methodology using in-depth interview. The in-depth interview method was used to collect data based on the conversations or question and answer sessions between the data collector or interviewer and 10 respondents or interviewees, who are responsible for booking meeting rooms at a university hospital.  The data analysis found two issues related with their expectations: (1) “room / officer / equipment”, which means the meeting room as desired, the ready-to-use equipment, and the availability of the meeting room officer, and (2) “booking system as expected”, which means a desirable online system with responsive functions.

           The findings showed that in addition to the sufficient number of meeting rooms with audio-visual equipment support for the meeting and friendly service from the responsible officer, the relevant work unit should place its emphasis on the convenient and rapid checking of meeting room schedules which will affect the service users’ decision-making and planning for the meeting. Therefore, the development of an online meeting room booking system is essential because the information on the meeting room schedules or availability status is needed to be accurate, reliable, and up-to-date.