The reception area is one of the most important areas of your business to create first impressions and welcome visitors.
Some organisations have multiple receptionists, and some have part-time receptionists. Whilst others have job share where the staff multitask between the reception and other duties. Many organisations do not have a receptionist at all.
How do you greet and tend to your visitors if your reception area is unstaffed? Or if the doors to your business are locked?
Is there a bell at the front desk?
How do your visitors find their host if your business does not have a receptionist and the reception desk is unstaffed? Do your visitors need to ring the bell at the front desk to get attention? How long do you visitors have to wait after ringing the bell for someone to greet them? Who on your team is responsible for responding when the bell rings? Is it a random person’s job, or does everyone leave it for someone else to attend to the visitor who has rung the bell multiple times and has been waiting for several minutes? What first impression have you just created?
Do you still have a staff directory and phone at the front desk?
Some organisations that do not have a staffed reception area provide their visitors with a phone and a directory listing all their staff. In this situation, you are expecting your visitors, possibly a customer, to go through the directory, pick up the phone and dial the number of the host. What if the host is away from their desk? And no one answers the phone. What first impression has your business just created? Also, how secure is the information in the directory? Can anyone walk in from the street and take copies/photos of your staff list with their phone numbers? Is this the best way to manage an unstaffed reception area?
Are your Front doors locked?
Office safety is essential, and many organisations physically lock the front door to their business. There may be genuine reasons for stopping unwanted salespeople or hawkers from coming in or for security reasons. The reasons for locking make sense, but how do your visitors get attention in this situation? Do they have to bang the front door down to be heard? And just like having a bell placed on an unstaffed reception desk, whose responsibility is it to answer the door? Do you have an assigned person who must be available at all times to answer doors, or is it that no one answers the door because they all expect the next person to do so? What first impression have you just created?
Staffed reception desks
Now, if your business does have a highly-skilled receptionist, there will still be times when the reception desk will be unstaffed. The receptionist could be on a break, away from the desk or unwell and out for the day. How do you handle replacing your receptionist in this situation? Do you spend more money and hire a temp? Or does one of your other staff members have to fill in for the day? With the reception desk unstaffed, even for a few minutes can lead to much disruption and inconvenience to the flow of your business, your staff, and most importantly, your customers and visitors.
Conclusion
In any of the above situations, you could easily overcome the challenges of not having a full-time receptionist or having an unstaffed front area by installing a digital visitor management solution like ezy signin.
A digital visitor management solution from ezy signin provides your visitors with multiple different ways to:
- register on arrival.
- select their host.
- answer any screening questions.
- notify that the host has been alerted of their arrival and will be with them shortly.
A digital visitor management solution helps you standardise the visitor check-in process locally, nationally and internationally. It is a process repeated perfectly every time a guest or a visitor arrives at your business.
People HATE nothing more than having to wait, whether it’s waiting in queues, waiting for a web page to load, waiting for a bus, a taxi, an uber, or just waiting to be attended to when they visit your business.
You only have one shot at creating a first impression. Why not make sure that it is a great first impression by using our digital visitor management system for your business.
