Perhaps one of the busiest employees in your organization is your receptionist. They’re constantly handling important duties such as answering the phone, greeting people who walk in the door, and ensuring deliveries go to the right person, among their many other responsibilities.
Depending on the type of business you have and your receptionist’s job description, they may be juggling other important work as well. Some receptionists handle office tasks such as filing, data entry, event planning, travel arrangements, and general office management.
However, there’s a solution that can help ease the burden of some of the tasks that might be on your receptionist’s plate. A visitor management system (VMS) like The Receptionist for iPad can take over some of the more mundane, repeatable responsibilities, leaving your staff free to focus on other things. Here are seven tasks a visitor management system can take off your receptionist’s plate.
1. Directing Office Traffic
Have you ever walked into the lobby of an office only to stand around awkwardly as you wait for the receptionist to finish their phone call and greet you? Your visitors aren’t big fans of that either.
The Receptionist for iPad ensures this won’t happen. When someone enters your office, the first thing they’ll do is head to the iPad and check in. It’ll be simple for them because you can set up the system to either easily walk them through customized check-in questions, or you can pre-register guests. Then, when visitors arrive, the person they’re there to see gets notified once the guest has completed their check-in.
For deliveries, the delivery person simply has to select the recipient from a list of employees and the recipient will be immediately notified. If there’s no name on the delivery, or if the delivery person is in a rush, there’s an Assigned Deliveries feature that notifies a group of people, and whoever is available can then claim the delivery.
2. Sending Company-wide Notifications
Urgent: there are doughnuts in the breakroom! This is vital information everyone in the office needs to know immediately!
All jokes aside, The Receptionist for iPad’s Broadcast Notifications feature allows an authorized user to send a push notification to the appropriate people in the office. For example, if there’s an emergency evacuation order, Broadcast Notifications allows the user to notify everyone in the office, including visitors who are currently checked in. They can do so via Slack, Microsoft Teams, SMS, or email, to name a few.
3. Keeping the Office Safe and Healthy
Communicable diseases can wreak havoc on an office, and many businesses have health and safety protocols in place to protect themselves from illness. This might include having visitors take and report their temperature upon arrival, or answering a brief questionnaire about their health status. For example: do they have a fever, cough, or other symptoms? If they answer yes, you can have The Receptionist for iPad let employees know that they will need to ask their guest to come back another day.
There are also features that help the receptionist keep the office safe from threats. For example, the team here at The Receptionist can assist in setting up a Zapier integration to make an internal “watchlist.” Then, if someone on that list tries to check in, it sends an alert to a designated user (usually security), allowing them to handle the situation swiftly and discreetly.
4. Printing Badges
If you need your visitors to display their identity, you can connect a badge printer to The Receptionist for iPad which will automatically print the visitor a badge upon check-in. This can be useful if your office gets a lot of traffic.
You can set up the badge printer to show the visitor’s name, the reason for their visit, the name of the person they’re visiting, and even a photo. You can also request other relevant information from guests and have that information displayed on the badge thanks to our customizable drag-and-drop badge editor.
This takes the task of providing the visitor with a nametag away from your receptionist so they can focus on, say, arranging travel for the CEO to speak at a conference.
5. Having Visitors Sign Documents
When security is a concern, you may need your visitors to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) or other similar documents when they check in. This hopefully helps prevent any visitor from potentially repeating or sharing sensitive information they may stumble upon during their time in your office.
You can then store these signed documents for later reference in the case of violation.
6. Communicating with Visitors in Another Language
Not all of us are multi-lingual, potentially including the staff members at your front desk. If it’s common to have visitors who don’t speak English visit your office, you can set up The Receptionist for iPad to allow them to check in using a language with which they are comfortable. Currently, the available languages are English, French, and Spanish.
This eliminates certain language barriers, allowing your non-English speaking visitors to provide all necessary information.
7. Managing Visitor Logs
Finally, but not least importantly, using a VMS makes paper log books completely obsolete. Your receptionist doesn’t have to spend time inputting information about who visited the office and why, or finding a place to store those used logbooks for record keeping. Instead, The Receptionist for iPad stores that information in our cloud-based Visit Log, making it easily accessible for whatever you may need it for in the future.
To learn more about how The Receptionist for iPad works, join our next product tour.
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