Will visitor management integration replace receptionists?

According to a visitor management white paper by Proxyclick, two out of every five people in the 2,000 US and UK workers surveyed claim their perception of a company or brand has been negatively affected by their experience in the corporate lobby or reception area.

71% cited unfriendly receptionists as the most important reason for their bad experience, and over half blamed a lacklustre welcome.

This is an understandable and widespread problem in the B2B sector. When you don’t have a “customer-facing” element to your workplace, it can be easy to slide into functional, unfriendly presentation methods. Another sector which can suffer from this is the small and micro business, which even if they need to speak to customers directly may not have enough staff to “waste” someone at the front desk all day. A good example is a car bodywork garage.

An unfriendly, unwelcoming receptionist can be caused by many factors. First, of course, is a simple lack of job engagement by the employee. This should be quickly picked up by management and addressed with a frank discussion about expectations.

Secondly, the receptionist may not be actually unfriendly! They might just come across that way because they are nervous and unsure what exactly to say or do. This is commonly seen in companies where receptionists aren’t receptionists at all – they are staff with other roles on a front-desk rota.

“Oh, Alex, just answer the phones today, will you?”

This sort of arrangement can work well as long as the tasks required are very simple, but if something breaks or if a guest asks an awkward question, someone with no training and little experience is likely to freeze and give an inadequate and even unhelpful answer.

The seemingly obvious solution to this is to either move one member of staff to reception full-time, or to hire a specialised receptionist. However, this are generally not possible for smaller companies. They can’t afford a whole new person, and can’t lose an existing member’s workload to let them sit at the desk.

So what should you do?

As recommended by the ProxyClick white paper, the solution is to integrate as much technology into your reception process as possible, to create a smooth, professional and friendly visitor management experience. Here at Time and Attendance UK, we have many different options for you.

Let’s start at the beginning. Our Management of Contractors and Visitors Software (MCVS) app allows visitors to book their appointments in advance in their browser. A confirmation email is sent to the visitor and to the person they are visiting (the host).

Once the visit is set up, it can be entered onto the host’s diary or visitor list, or wherever would be clearest. This eliminates the possibility of a clueless receptionist turning someone away, or panicking unprofessionally as they try to ring the host to confirm.

A streamlined integrated visitor management system begins with the inclusion of Tensor’s access control system. The visitor’s submitted photograph and vehicle registration can be entered into the company’s facial recognition and Automatic Number Plate Recognition modules, and their information can be linked to an access profile which pre-sets their door permissions.

This means that when the visitor turns up they don’t have to go through security at the gate, they don’t have to write their number plate down in a sign-in book, and they don’t even need to wear an annoying visitor pass.

Reassuringly for managers and security staff, there is also no way for the visitors to get through doors that they do not have access permissions for, thanks to Tensor’s high quality door controllers and powerful locks.

Upon arrival, their host would receive an email alerting them. (If your staff are a little slow at checking their inboxes, you could still ask the receptionist to ring!)

If you’re thinking that this sounds like the receptionist would be a little redundant … well, you’re not wrong. For companies who don’t need a receptionist (or, to go back to the beginning, small companies who can’t afford one), we can offer an Unmanned Reception App, otherwise known as the Self-Service Visitor Management App (SSVM). This app runs on any Android or iOs tablet and allows visitors to check themselves into their appointment without a receptionist needing to be present.

Whether checked-in by a receptionist or by themselves, once a visitor is registered as in the building Tensor’s access control system will add them to the real-time list. This is ideal for security, as they can see all entrance and exit times to all doors for this visitor.

A less expected benefit is to health-and-safety. If a fire alarm sounds, the central system will print an up-to-date, real-time list of everyone who is in that building or zone. So even if the visitor has nipped to the loo on the way out of their meeting, they will not be overlooked or forgotten about when it comes to the emergency roll call.

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Integrating systems deeply into all areas of your workplace might feel like an unnecessarily futuristic plan. But it is 2018 and technology is marching on, and if you’re not careful to keep up with your competitors then you could lose business for your unfriendly and unprofessional demeanour.

Talk to us about our Visitor Management software, or to Tensor about their Access Control solutions (including ANPR and Facial Recognition).