How to Master the Art of Visitor Management | Check-In App

Visitor management is the process in which you welcome visitors to your workplace. In decades part, the receptionist was the first point of contact for visitors coming into the office. 

Today's modern offices and progressive companies are utilizing electronic visitor management systems, via a check-in app. These self-help visitor registration kiosks make the process of greeting visitors and delivery people faster and they require less human capital. Best of all, visitors seem to love using them.

How Does a Visitor Check-in App Work?

In the 1960s, when a visitor entered your office, they would surely be greeted by a receptionist. Over the decades though, and sped up by The Great Recession, that has changed.

In today's modern offices, visitors will enter your lobby and sign in using a check-in app, like Greetly, instead. This software runs on an iPad or other touch screen tablet computer. From this point, the guest can also choose whom they are there to see, and that person will be alerted immediately by voice call, text message, email, or Slack notification. The check-in app can also collect additional information from the customer based on your company's or the customer's needs. 

What Are the Benefits?

Electronic visitor management systems leave a lasting impression on customers because there is no waiting sign in if the receptionist is away from the desk on an errand; there is no shifting from foot to foot while the receptionist finishes scheduling an appointment on the telephone. Additionally, an electronic check-in leaves a positive impression. It is sleek. It is innovative. It says something about your company.

Invariably, when you ask customers what they want, they will say efficiency, a streamlined process that delivers the services or items they need without a lot of waiting or prolonged interaction.

From a public relations standpoint, good visitor management systems play a critical role in customer retention and customer satisfaction because customer check-in, via a check-in app, leaves nothing to chance and is always a money saver for you.

In other words:

• You know why the customer is there before you greet him or her. You also get a photo of the visitor, so you have all the tools for a warm first impression.
• The customer's information is already on file electronically through an app for future marketing purposes even if a lucrative transaction does not take place that day.
• Sometimes personalities don't mesh even in people with the best intentions and friendliest demeanor. This is not a concern when one of those personalities is virtual.
• A check-in app or a virtual receptionist is more cost-efficient to your company than hiring a receptionist. Or, if you do have a receptionist, they can also do more around the office.

Visitor Management as an Art

Today's customers, according to a survey published in Fast Company, prefer self- service. In fact, 70 percent of survey respondents said they expect websites to include a self-service application.

This is more than a trend but the future of business, and self-service preferences definitely translate to real world settings. Look at the success of self-service checkouts in grocery stores, and the new inclination toward retailers without cashiers, via Amazon and Sam's Club.

Conclusion

When you begin to appreciate that today's office visitors values efficiency above all else, and prefers self-service to interaction with a middleman, it only makes sense to give them what they have asked for... This is the hallmark of great customer service. And now, the core to great visitor management. It's simple; the art of visitor management is efficiency through technology.