“Good day” makes marriage registration difficult Influenced by Chinese traditional marriage custom, Chinese people consider much to select a “good day” for marriage registration, even some are not afraid of hard work to stand in a line just for a successful marriage registration at a “good day”. Some local marriage registration bureaus are very busy at those “good days”, but still some get nothing. As the matter of fact, this problem can be settled by using telephone which is the most common and convenient tool, and possibly to make all parities happy.

Marriage registration cases in Futian District of Shenzhen City each year accounts for over one-third of the total in Shenzhen City. In recent years, this number is going up to 90000 cases respectively in 2004 and 2005, and even up to 8000 case from January throughout August of 2006. During peak days, there are more than 200 pairs a day standing in a very long line for marriage registration, and it is common to see 200m line waiting for marriage registration. Nevertheless, the local marriage registration bureau has adopted some measures to lessen the burden such as distributing them waiting number, arranging automatic queue-up machine and overtime work, etc., it is still difficult to satisfy their demand at peak day, which imposes not only inconvenience to citizen but also create great pressure to the personnel who are working with the marriage registration bureau. In order to shorten the time for citizens to wait for going through marriage registration and lessen the work load borne by the personnel who are working with the marriage registration bureau as well as keep the local marriage registration bureau running normally according to schedule, Futian District Civil Administration of Shenzhen City, through site learning in HK, firstly trial marriage registration reservation service system by opening “Marriage Registration, Consultation and Reservation Service System”to its citizens. This system provides three kinds of 24h reservations which are voice telephone reservation, online reservation and site reservation to those young couples that any of them is the registered citizen of Futian District.  

Value-added service ensures orderly reservation

Donjin Tech together with its partners built up a 24h voice telephone marriage consultation, registration and reservation system for Futian District Civil Administration by using Donjin Tech based voice value-added comprehensive platform based on their deep research into the service objects, office environment and existing informatization and other internal features of Futian Civil Administration Marriage Registration Bureau. Donjin Tech based value-added voice service comprehensive platform has telecom-level stability and rich service functionality: by relying on telecom-level hardware structure making full use of Tonjin company’s core technology in voice fundamental hardware, it enhanced and optimized the voice processing ability, voice exchange ability and system computation ability of the platform and guaranteed in providing resources for system functionality expansion. In addition, the platform is built on an open and standard infrastructure by inserting voice, SMS, fax and WEB functions into service flow and service logic in a flexible manner. Plus, its visualized and graphics based development methodologies enables its ability to easily and quickly modify and add applications and functions. All these features not only make this system practical to use and easy to operate but also provide a wider space for future system expansion and upgrading.

This system is very intuitive and convenient in use. By dialing “0755－82928049”, marriage affairs consultation and reservation can be realized through operation following the reminder. When the line gets through, the system will first check if there is an idle line available, if not, the system will sound with “the system is busy, please redial after a while”, the system then hangs up. If an idle line available, the called telephone gets through to the system, then playout the latest public notice before sounds with “voice consultation please presses 1, reservation registration please dial 2”. Consultation includes three service modes namely of automatic speech recognition, to-do through fax, and manual service with service contents covering all kinds of information and FAQs relating to marriage registration through which the person who asks questions can get the answer according to his/her option. If you wish to make a reservation for marriage registration, you may make it true by entering the reservation flow first and operate according to the instruction. The first step you need to do is to input the reservation date, which will be subject to auto judgment if the reservation date inputted is a working day; then you should select morning or afternoon you like to do registration. If the system checks that your reservation period is busy, then it will remind you of reselection. When the system confirms there is a possibility for the arrangement of such reservation, the system will inform you of the reserved sequence number and time/date, provided that the system verifies the inputted marriage applicants IDs. If you contact phone registered with the system is a mobile phone, the system will send you mobile phone a reservation-making short message.

Consultation service provision through telephone is an easy and convenient way for marriage registration and suitable for all groups, which greatly shortens the time and labor cost for new couples to go through marriage registration and benefits a lot all new couples who are so busy keeping on preparing their wedding. While on the other hand, the local civil administration departments in charge of marriage application are able to know in advance the number of marriage registration applicants in specific days, enabling them the ability to provide service by arranging accordingly number of service personnel to deal with different work load so as to make their service running smoothly and realize a comprehensive improvement in working efficiency and service ability. The advantages of this system are exposed completely during the marriage peak months of September and October. With the help of this system, many new couples have selected their desired “good day” and been given an easy and happy day moving into their most important life section.

According to reliable source, this marriage reservation system working in Futian District currently provides 40 reservations a day, which is expected to be increased with the popularization of this system until all marriage registrations are done through reservation handling.