๐ค Where we come from
We previously did release waiting time and offices as open data and APIs:
... yet we were only able to give the current waiting time snapshot:
Last year, while projecting myself as a customer, I found that it would be useful to
- ๐พ Keep the historical data of waiting time in an database : we chose Opensearch to be able to get nice looking dashboards as quick as possible
- **๐ Serve the data **as a nice looking API
- ๐ Share the API on our portal developer on APIGEE
- โฟ Quickly build a first prototype on top of the API with students to get feedbacks (and give some bug bounties) so we could build a develper friendly API
๐ This post is all about this last this adventure with students.
๐ฏ The pitch
Essentially as a PO, what I wanted was to be able, from a web interface to
- Pick any office
- Be able to browse the historical data of the current day
... and this is what we got:
๐ฟ For impatients
๐ฐ Benefits of historical wait time data
There are a lot of benefits and potential that come with wait time, both :
- For the customer
- For enterprise
๐ค Customer : trends benefits
- While the current wait time gives you a snapshot, historical data gives you trends that make it possible for you to know if queuing is currently getting better or worst
- Makes it possible to the customer to choose the best time to come to the office (see "Crowdsourcing Feature Lets iPhone Users Determine Best Time to Cross U.S. Border")
๐ข Enterprise benefits and data-driven strategy
eg, from the service provider perspective, the main goal is to both:
- ๐ Minimize customers wait time to smoother Customer Experience (which also relies on digitalization and self service)
- ๐ Maximize service throughput : serve as much customers as possible with as less people a possible waiting in the office
So sharing live and historical wait time trends has a major impact and opens tremendous opportunities, see below some real life examples:
- Share historic data as ready to use open datasets to make Open Innovation possible
- Smart Wait Estimates: Increase customer satisfaction with accurate wait time quotes
- The Disney World case : Predicting Disney World Wait Times with Neural Networks : "In general, you can predict what sorts of wait times to expect based on the day of the week and the season-- September, for example, tends to have fairly low attendance due to kids going back to school"
- US Customs and Border Protection Airport Wait Times
- Government of Canada: Historical Border Wait Times โ Land Mode
๐ Resources
๐งโ๐ More about University partnership
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