A student emails the admissions officer about a housing deposit. Reception fields a visa question. The international coordinator forwards a fee inquiry to finance, who forwards it back with a note. The student waits through all of it — and learns to ask whoever answered fastest last time, which makes the routing worse.
Why students cannot find the right person
Institutions publish names and titles; students have situations. "Senior Administrative Officer, Student Services" tells a stressed eighteen-year-old nothing about whether this is the person for a lost ID card. So students guess, or default to reception, which becomes a human router absorbing the cost of an information design problem. Staff inboxes fill with questions that belong elsewhere, response times stretch, and the questions that genuinely belong to each role queue behind the ones that do not.
What routing by situation changes
A Staff Directory organized by need: I have a question about fees, my visa, my timetable, my accommodation, my health — each leading to the right person or team, with contact details, hours, and what to include. A Q&A path catches what the directory does not anticipate. Students reach the owner first; reception returns to being a welcome desk.
Six steps inside SumHubs
You don't have to start from a blank page.
The staff directory with question routing is a ready SumHubs template — mapped to your teams in an afternoon. Request a sample hub to see your directory rebuilt by situation.