The Receptionist for iPad is here to make your life and your visitor experience easier by automating repetitive tasks and letting you — a human — do what you do best.
That means making sure you have all the information you need to do just that. So let’s explore the many features within The Receptionist for iPad that you may not have known about. Get ready – The Receptionist is about to get that much better!
The Receptionist Features You Never Knew You Needed
We sat down with our Customer Experience team to get an idea of what features our customers were underutilizing that could have the biggest effect on calming the chaotic nature of their visitor check-in procedures.
Here’s what they said:
Add A Notification Button
The Check-In button gets a ton of love, and understandably so. After all, checking in guests is kind of the main point, right?
But what if you have a specific visitor, like an interview candidate, that doesn’t know what contact to select during the check-in prompts? Enter the Notification button!
The Notification button eliminates the step of a visitor selecting a contact by instead automatically routing the check-in notification to the appropriate, predetermined contact(s).
To use the interview candidate example, the candidate would check in and fill out the information fields as usual, but instead of selecting a Contact, the candidate would complete their check-in and the notification would be routed directly to your HR contact(s). This eliminates confusion for visitors and makes set-up for admins that much easier.
Read more about Notification buttons
Assign Visits For Notification Buttons
Some businesses, like banks or salons that welcome walk-ins, need a queuing system. This is made possible with the Assign Visits feature for Notification buttons.
This allows guests to enter their information and complete their check-in as usual without selecting an employee contact. Instead, a group of employees is notified of a new unclaimed check-in, and the guest is assigned to the first employee to claim the visitor in the system to complete the process.
Our customers have been making the most out of this feature by adding Notification buttons like:
- I Don’t Know My Contact
- Need Assistance
- Walk Ins / No Appointment
Pro Tip #1: If you don’t want an entire button dedicated to this workflow, a generic employee Contact with the same function can be created. For instance, you can set up a standard Contact called ‘I Don’t Know My Contact,’ use Manual Sort so that it appears at the top of the Contact list, and allow visitors to make this selection for designated buttons. After making this selection, the visitor will be added to the queue and signed in once claimed by an employee who received the notification.
Pro Tip #2: Improve your customer service experience by keeping track of how long your visitors are waiting. With the Assign Visits feature, you can export the time your visitor checked in along with the time they were received so that your team can continue to improve your guests’ experience at your business.
Read more about Assigning Visits with the Notification button
Contactless Check-In
Did you know there is a way for your visitors to check in without ever touching the iPad? Allow your visitors to use their own mobile device to check in by scanning a QR code displayed on The Receptionist for iPad screen. There are many reasons why this feature is valuable for our customers, including maintaining physical safety, ensuring security, and/or avoiding a long line at the iPad.
So, how does it work? With Contactless Check-In, your visitor will approach the iPad, and a QR code will automatically pop up on the screen. The visitor will scan the QR code with their own mobile device’s camera and complete their check in on a webpage instead of on the iPad. Once they answer all the check-in questions, they present a separate QR code back to the iPad to finalize their check-in.
Pro Tip: Alternatively, if you want visitors to check in before they enter your building or office, you can print the QR code with instructions and post it outside your office or building to allow your visitor to check in without exposing your iPad to the elements.
Read more about Contactless Check-In
Pre-Check In
If you don’t want your visitors to check themselves in when they get to your facility, you can use the Pre-Check In tool. For example, this is particularly useful if you are expecting a large group or high volume of visitors and want to avoid a long line at the iPad upon arrival. The Pre-Check In tool is designed to eliminate interaction with the iPad while still keeping detailed information about your visitors.
Pre-Check In works by manipulating Contactless check-in. Use your Contactless link to enter each visitor’s name, email and any other information to complete the check-in. From there, the visitor will appear in the Visit Log as a queued visit. When the visitor arrives, select the check-in button next to their name, and voila – they’re checked in!
Evacuation List
No one expects an emergency, but it’s necessary to always be prepared for one. A component of that is always having access to knowledge of exactly who is in your building. The Evacuation List does just that.
The Evacuation List is a live log of all active, checked-in visitors for use when you need to evacuate your office or building. It can be easily accessed from anywhere you can log into The Receptionist (i.e. smartphone, iPad, computer) by pressing and holding the top middle of your welcome screen for a few seconds.
To ensure your Evacuation List is always up-to-date, your visitors should check out when they leave. Of course, the system defaults to auto-checkout visitors at 11:59 pm every day, but here are some methods to help keep the list as accurate as possible throughout the day:
- Update the text on the button screen with a checkout reminder
- Update the text on a button’s Thank You screen with a checkout reminder
- Use the Custom Text field on badges to have a printed checkout reminder
- Set up a Zap (Zapier Integration) to email/notify a visitor and/or their Contact if the visitor is not checked out after a predetermined amount of time
Read more about Evacuation Lists
Exporting Your Visitor Log
With The Receptionist for iPad, you always have access to a customizable and exportable view of your visitor activity. Filter by specific days or a range of dates, specific buttons, and devices, and even use the search bar to view a check-in with a specific name or company. Pick and choose what fields to include and even schedule exports to be sent automatically. Daily, weekly and/or monthly reports can be delivered to yourself or any authorized user.
Read more about exporting your Visit Log
Departments
Grouping contacts is useful in keeping your check-in process simple for visitors and managing contacts internally. You can easily do this with the Departments feature.
You can assign a Department to a Contact during an import or by editing an individual contact. So, for example, if an interview candidate checks in, the notification can be set to send to any Contact with the HR Department designation.
There are other creative ways to use Departments beyond internally. If a coworking space has several companies working out of one location, Departments can instead be used for company name, suite number, etc.
Pro Tip: Create semi-private Contacts with the Departments feature. Any contact without an assigned Department will not appear on the contact list on the iPad, but can still be found by searching their name. For example, you may not want your company’s CEO to appear on check-in lists, but they can still be reached by searching their name. You can also set a minimum character limit required for a contact’s name to appear.
Visit Notes
There are countless reasons why you might need to add an internal note to a visit record. Let’s say you need to temporarily assign an access card to a visitor while they are on-site, you can save the badge number in the Visit Notes. Similarly, if you need to confirm that a visitor’s ID was checked, that can be confirmed in the Visit Notes, as well.
To add a Visit Note, click on the Menu option for any visit. This opens a new window where you can enter up to 4,000 characters about the visit. Once a note is added, it will appear as a line item under the Details column.
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