Your receptionist does a lot more than you think!
Today, from the office reception desk your receptionist is expected to do a lot more than manage switchboards. Being a receptionist has evolved and now requires skills beyond answering phone calls and taking messages. The receptionist is the communications hub of any business. Today, a receptionist is in charge of answering calls, making calls, taking notes, greeting visitors, printing visitor badges, allocating desks, booking meeting rooms and directing all people coming and going from your office. On occasions, a receptionist also has to get security clearances for your visitors and contractors.
Start of the day for your receptionist
Typically a receptionist starts the day by checking that the office, meeting rooms and waiting areas are clean and tidy. Ensure you have enough supplies for your team and check any voicemail messages. Review the To-Do List, attend to administrative tasks for staff, arrange birthdays for staff, get clients’ gifts, and attend to internal and external visitors.
First interactions with visitors & contractors
The receptionist is the first interaction your visitors, clients, and contractors have with your business, tasking the receptionist with creating the very best first impressions for your company. Creating great first impressions is no easy task. If your receptionist is like most businesses where they are busy answering calls making calls, recording information, taking messages, dealing with cold calls, it can be tough to track and log visitor-related information. Your receptionist is quite often run off their feet.
Visitor & contractor management
On the subject of visitors, your business may use a paper logbook, and the receptionist is responsible for making sure that the record in the logbook is accurate. Suppose your company does not use any logbooks. In that case, the receptionist has to greet visitors warmly, create a great first impression, find out the visitor’s name, the company they represent, and who they are here to meet. Receptionists also have to print a visitor badge and record visitor-related information manually. After collecting all visitor information, the receptionists’ next task is to locate and contact the host. If the host fails to respond or show within a reasonable timeframe, the receptionist then has to try to get the host again, and if the host still cannot be reached, the receptionist has to advise the visitor that there will be a delay as she has been unable to locate the host. This delay can be several minutes leading to a very Poor First Impression.
What else does a receptionist need to do?
One of the other key and important things a receptionist has to do is compile a list of all visitors, including contact numbers, and this list is essential and will be used to mitigate any emergencies that may arise.
This list has to be shared with the wardens to contact all visitors and ensure that all visitors evacuate the building safely.
How do you share a paper-based list quickly in an emergency?
In an emergency, the reality is that this usually cannot be done efficiently and quickly. You are leaving your organisation exposed to a potential disaster in the workplace. You could also face legal problems depending on the severity of the disaster.
A receptionist does much more than what we have covered above. It’s not easy being a receptionist.
How can you help your receptionist do their job better?
You can provide new technologies to manage some of the functions performed by your receptionist. One of the latest technologies that can make a receptionist’s life easier to operate and manage the front desk efficiently is installing a digital visitor management solution like ezy signin.
Ezy Signin can digitally present and get acceptance from all visitors for your visitor policies and emergency procedures, reducing potential problems litigation and manually keeping records of all visitor arrivals and departures.
Conclusion
In conclusion, ezy signin’s front desk system is an ideal solution to help your receptionist and your business create a great first impression.
Ezy Signin can streamline and digitise the process of recording all visitor arrivals and departures for your business, school or government department. Your business can use ezy signin’s free version that allows up to 120 visits a year.
There is no excuse for not digitising and streamlining your visitor management process.
Should you require additional functionality, you can sign up for a paid plan with multiple add ONS available to you as options. Get in contact with us to ascertain that ezy sign-in is a good fit for your business.
