It’s very easy to think “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” when it comes to your visitor experience. After all, if you haven’t had any complaints and everything seems to be running perfectly smoothly, then there’s no problem to solve, right?
The reality can be very different. From job candidates coming in for an interview, to clients hoping to build a relationship, the expectations of new visitors are higher than ever. In particular, they want full confidence that from the moment they walk through the door, their visit will be positive, productive, and free of any stress or unnecessary admin.
This is why a best-in-class visitor management system is so important in the modern business world. If you’re still not convinced, allow us to make our case.
You’ll impress your visitors
First impressions count for a lot, and visitors have their expectations set right from the time they arrive. And yet, as Proxyclick’s Front Desk Experience Survey found, reception duties are often so cumbersome that they cause meetings to start later than scheduled:
- In 60% of cases of late meeting starts, there have been long queues at reception
- 49% of the time, the receptionist couldn’t make contact with the meeting host
- 47% of the time, there were too many forms for the visitor to fill in on arrival
The right visitor management system can solve all three of these issues. Visitors can quickly check-in through self-service functionality and a single all-encompassing process, which then immediately alerts the meeting host to their arrivals.
You’ll streamline your front-of-house processes
Proxyclick’s research also found that almost half of American workers have had bad experiences in a corporate lobby area. These experiences range across a variety of different issues, but by far the most commonly cited is an unfriendly welcome or poor service from front-of-house staff.
Sometimes this can be down to the stresses of the job that the staff face: having to deal with repetitive, time-consuming processes checking in visitor after visitor, on top of answering phones, collecting deliveries and countless other duties can make it challenging to always put on a happy face. Using technology to relieve some of that administrative burden on front-of-house staff is therefore worth exploring — for the benefit of both your visitors and reception staff alike.
A visitor management system is especially useful here as the check-in procedure can be partly or fully automated, with the use of self-service kiosks where attendees can provide their information and even print out a pass. This can reduce the check-in workload of a receptionist to very close to zero.
You’ll stay compliant with data regulations
Now more than ever, people are very sensitive about sharing their personal data. So when they come into your office and they’re asked for information like phone numbers, email addresses, or even their license plate number of their car in the car park, they can quickly feel very uncomfortable.
Of course, some of these pieces of information are an essential part of the check-in process, and thus can’t be filtered out entirely. Often, these pieces of information must be collected to fulfill a business contract or as part of a required security protocol, in order to comply with data privacy legislation like GDPR. Using a tech-based system with built-in security helps you give visitors confidence that their data is safe, as well as allowing you to craft check-in processes that balance the need for data and the need for privacy.
You’ll keep your building more secure
Connected to the previous point, a more secure check-in and visitor management system can help enforce better security for the business as a whole.
If you’re still using pen and paper to sign people into your building, how do you know that visitors are who they say they are? How do you know they’re representing the business they claim to be representing? And what’s stopping them from impersonating someone else to get access to your buildings, people, data and intellectual property?
The best visitor management systems offer advanced ID verification tools like watchlist-checking, and make guest check-in the first line of defense for your building.
What should you look for in a visitor management system?
What your ideal visitor management system looks like will vary, depending on the nature of your building and workforce, and the types of visitors you normally get on a regular basis. You should ask your organization these key questions as part of the discovery stage, so that you can understand the biggest priorities you’re looking for from a system. Taking on board the views of as many stakeholders as possible can give you the fullest picture from which to make that decision.
However, in order to enjoy all of the benefits we’ve mentioned in this blog, your first port of call should be to investigate a cloud-based visitor management system, which offers maximum flexibility, security, and scalability.
