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The first PBSA to revolutionise student payment management
About Student Roost
Organisation type:
Challenges solved:
- Introducing new payment methods consumed a lot of time, effort and cost a lot of money.
- Payment development had to be treated as a bespoke service, which often made it hard to introduce new payment methods. This made it harder to respond to market trends and changes, impacting the student experience.
- Some systems across the company weren’t integrated, which meant any reconciliation could be a lengthy process
- Implementing customer feedback was often difficult due to the nature of introducing new payment methods.
Size of operation:
- 54 sites across 20 cities
- 20,000 beds
Client since:
- 2017
Product suites:
- Student Accommodation Management
- Student Payment Management (KxPayments)
What makes Student Roost unique?
Providing the very best experience
Excellent locations across 20 cities
The first PBSA to revolutionise their payment offering
Award winning student accommodation
Student Roost are one of the largest and most well-respected PBSA operators in the UK. They came to the market wanting to offer a different experience to other PBSA providers and constantly strive to keep it that way, across everything they do. Their aim? Ensure residents feel safe, comfortable and cared for at their home away from home. Interactions between staff and residents are encouraged, especially face-to-face, and each property has 24/7 on-site support and social events – something that's not available within most student accommodation. They recognise the need for interaction, and the impact it has on the student experience.
Right from the start, Student Roost gave their residents a wide range of choices, and when it comes to payments this is no different. Students have options outside the traditional termly methods, such as payment terms, and had the ability for annual and monthly payment plans - something unique within the industry at the time. But now their payment methods, plans, and systems have evolved, and that's thanks to KxPayments by Kinetic!
The Customer Experience
"The goal is to make things easy for our residents."
Across 54 sites, their aim remains the same, and is achieved by prioritising the resident experience! When the decision was made to evolve the current student payment solution, and implement KxPayments, Student Roost opted to start slowly, only replacing like-for-like solutions so that it had a familiar feel and minimised any disruption to their residents.
The plan for the future? Well, come October there will be a new look to their payment pages and even new channels to facilitate payment. There is a mindset within Student Roost that offering many combinations of payment types, and not forcing everyone down the same route, will continue to improve their customer experience - something that is consistent throughout the business. One thing is for certain, Student Roost will continue to engage with their residents to find out how they want to pay the bills and improve this experience, something they're confident KxPayments will help them do.
"The real jewel in the crown will be to implement Open Banking; this will give us a Gen Z solution which we hope will prove popular with our residents."
Jonathon Bushell, Head of IT
Internal Benefits
Student Roost are seeing HUGE internal benefits as a result of KxPayments.
Whenever a new solution is implemented, it's sometimes easy to overlook the benefits it can bring internally. Which, to their surprise, is what happened to Student Roost. Having some integration between KxPayments and their student accommodation management solution, KxStudent, has made their banking reconciliation much easier than before, something their finance team is greatly benefitting from. However, it's not just the finance team who are benefiting; take into account the time, cost, and effort saved since implementing KxPayments and you can really see the benefits across the WHOLE business.
How KxPayments has helped Student Roost?
To find out more information about Student Roost, please visit www.studentroost.co.uk