Your receptionist does a lot more than you think!
See how visitor sign-in and front desk processes can be managed more efficiently
Most businesses underestimate the role of a receptionist, until small gaps in processes start creating delays, missed visitors, and poor first impressions.
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.
Today, receptionists are often expected to manage digital sign-ins, visitor tracking, and compliance requirements not just greet guests.
With so many responsibilities handled at the front desk, small gaps in processes can quickly lead to missed visitors, delays, and poor record keeping.
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.
Without clear processes in place, even these routine tasks can quickly become inconsistent and difficult to track.
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.
When visitor information isn’t captured consistently, it creates gaps in records, missed communications, and potential compliance risks.
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.
Without a reliable system in place, these manual processes often lead to delays, inconsistent records, and a poor experience for both visitors and staff.
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.
If this information isn’t accurate or readily accessible, it can delay emergency response and put both visitors and staff at risk.
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. This leaves your organisation exposed to potential risks 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. Without a reliable system, critical information is often delayed or unavailable when it’s needed most.
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 issues, legal risks, and the need for manual record keeping of all visitor arrivals and departures. This allows your receptionist to focus on people and experience, rather than managing manual processes and paperwork.
Conclusion
Knowing exactly who is on your site, what they’ve completed, and when it happened should be standard and not optional. 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.
Manual processes are no longer sufficient for managing visitors effectively.
Should you require additional functionality, you can sign up for a paid plan with multiple add ONS available to you as options. Book a demo to see how Ezy Sign-In can work for your business.