Make Back to School a MORE Seamless Experience with Smart Lockers

With the fall semester underway, usage of campus services is at its peak. Mailrooms are receiving of packages with everything from linens to coffee makers and bookstores fulfill a steady stream of textbooks and school apparel. Across campus, students are interacting with different services for the first time, from on-campus dining to the library, the registrar, and the bursar. This critical period of time establishes the way new students perceive their school and, ideally, sets students up for success throughout the rest of the school year.

At the same time, higher education institutions are facing unprecedented budgetary and staffing constraints. This means that school administrators and department heads are facing a critical challenge: finding ways to do more for students with less resources and staff.

In this blog, we examine how smart lockers can help you make the back-to-school experience more seamless for students while creating more efficiency for departments all across campus.

MORE Efficiency in the Mailroom

The staffing crunch in campus mailrooms is real and growing. A recent Spaces4Learning survey found that 36% of higher education operations professionals identified “too few staff” as their biggest challenge in managing mail and packages.¹ What’s more concerning? While 72% of respondents expect package volumes to continue rising, they don’t plan to hire additional personnel to handle the increased workload.

This is where smart locker technology becomes essential. These systems simplify package management while maximizing operational efficiency. At Shenandoah University, for instance, package delivery used to be just another campus headache. With 1,200 of the university’s 4,000 students living in 13 different residence halls, managing deliveries was a constant challenge.

That situation changed when Pam Burke, Director of Auxiliary Services, led the search for a better solution and ultimately chose Parcel Pending by Quadient. The results exceeded all expectations—and Burke knew it from an unexpected source. “Typically, students only contact me when they want to complain about something,” she explains. “So when two students actually sought me out in my office just to tell me how much they absolutely love using the lockers, I was genuinely shocked. That kind of positive feedback is incredibly rare.”

MORE Revenue at the Bookstore

Once students start classes and receive textbook and supply lists from their professors, the bookstore immediately starts seeing more traffic. Here, smart lockers create an unexpected solution: when students pick up online orders from campus lockers, they naturally flow back into the bookstore space. That foot traffic translates directly to sales, with research showing that a significant percentage of shoppers make unplanned purchases while retrieving their orders.

Plus, smart lockers put students in control of their pickup experience. Instead of waiting in lines or rushing to beat store hours, students can collect their orders on their own schedule, often with 24/7 access, depending on the location. The process takes as little as 7 seconds, which explains why 95% of locker users become repeat customers.

Valencia College in Florida discovered just how transformative smart lockers can be when the pandemic forced them to rethink their entire operation. Before implementing their “VC Vault” system, the college was struggling with unsustainable shipping costs and clunky in-store pickup processes that couldn’t handle the sudden surge in demand.

Their smart locker solution changed everything. Valencia automated their order pickup process, eliminating the need for 20-30 additional workers per shift who had been managing curbside pick-up. Campus Store Manager Frankie Ortiz put it best: “We didn’t have to deploy a small army to make sure that every student is prepared on that first day of class.”

Valencia College’s success didn’t stop at the bookstore. Their library quickly adopted the VC Vault as its central book distribution center, significantly enhancing its service capabilities. Now, the college is planning to integrate its food pantry into the network—proof that smart lockers can adapt to meet diverse student needs across campus.

MORE Access to Dining Services

Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2013, represents the first digital-native generation. They expect on-demand access to everything from sports to shows to food. Smart lockers enable students to retrieve food from the dining hall or food pantry at their convenience, without any attached stigma.

When Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC) launched its DISH Food Pantry in September 2019, it was addressing a critical need, but it recognized that traditional food pantry models might not be effective for all students. Enter “DISH and Dash Lockers” powered by Parcel Pending by Quadient smart lockers. In April 2022, BHCC installed three locker towers at the Charlestown campus, including two refrigerated units, making them the first college food pantry in the country to use refrigerated smart lockers.

The impact has been substantial. In 2024 alone, the DISH fulfilled 3,286 grocery orders and 35,809 Grab & Go visits, distributing more than 95,000 pounds of food.² The lockers continue to provide discreet food assistance that helps alleviate the anxiety many students feel about accessing food support services.

MORE Ways to Use Lockers

There are many ways to use lockers, even beyond the means discussed above. With Parcel Pending by Quadient’s Campus Hub™, you can transform your campus’s logistics by establishing a comprehensive distribution network across the entire campus where smart lockers serve as exchange points for more than just packages. Ticket distribution, library books, move-in documents, keys, class materials, and more can all be distributed through smart lockers.

This is because Parcel Pending smart lockers not only integrate with existing asset tracking platforms, such as Quadient’s Web Tracking System (WTS), but also with many other school systems, including student resident and property management platforms like StarRez. Our software seamlessly integrates with your existing solutions to establish a comprehensive chain-of-custody tracking system for all items passing through the locker system.

Smart lockers can address several campus challenges during the back-to-school period: streamlining overwhelmed mailroom operations, boosting bookstore revenue, and addressing student food security – all while offering the 24/7 convenience that today’s students demand. But lockers can also support all areas of campus throughout the year. By investing in lockers now, you can streamline campus operations ahead of other peak periods – including the holidays and the start of next semester.

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Ready to help your students thrive? Contact a Parcel Pending representative today to learn how your university can earn up to 25% off your purchase between now and October 30, 2025 with our Install for Fall promotion.

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Sources:

1. Spaces4Learning & Parcel Pending by Quadient. Campus Mailroom Operations: A Nexus of the Student Experience. www.parcelpending.com. May 31, 2024. https://www.parcelpending.com/en-us/resources/empower-your-campus-mailroom-meeting-the-evolving-needs-of-todays-students/
2. Bunker Hill Community College DISH Food Pantry. 2024 DISH Annual Report. www.bhcc.edu. n.d. https://www.bhcc.edu/media/03-documents/dishfoodpantry/Dish-Annual-Report.pdf