As a first step to bettering the look and the feel of your reception lets assess, ?What is the first impression that a visitor gets when he walks into your lobby? Is he going to see a long queue of agitated visitors? Or maybe he sees people filling out details in a fat register? Are there people waiting on the couch with aggravated expressions? Is there a security guard in a corner painstakingly checking in materials, applying himself to the job as best as is intelligence allows? Are the front office personnel trying to hail someone who is out of his desk while a visitor waits? If this is the impression that a visitor gets when he walks in, you can be assured that he won't ever forget it!?



Even if your reception looks as cool as the inside of a spaceship unless the service is on par with the looks it will not create the impression that you intend it to. Well-designed front offices are a dime a dozen, what one requires is to bowl the visitor over with the service.

So what does one do? As a first step registers need to be done away with and replaced by software. Why? For starters having software store the data is a more reliable method of storing visitor information; it's easier for future reference as well. Next it would do wonders for your reception to have old fat registers replaced by computers. And thirdly you could eliminate human error.

Visitor Management Software could run the entire show; it makes the task of capturing your visitor data and cataloguing it an effortless job. Print out cool visitor badges that can be stuck on the clothes of your visitor rather than having long roped badges that look more like plates hanging from your visitor's neck and making him feel most embarrassed. Have the visitor's business card scanned in a jiffy?

Now try imagining the impression that your new and reworked front office would make on your visitor. He walks into a lobby area that looks ultra-cool and is greeted by a smiling front office person in front of a computer. While he states his name and other details to be input a web cam takes his photo and stores it for reference. On one hand a barcode reader is scanning the materials that he is taking in for barcode while a printer is already printing out a badge with details of his visit on the other. He breezes by a minute later with a smile on his face that shows just how delighted and thrilled he is by the experience.

Front office people can be trained to speak politely; they can be taught how to smile to no end, they can be tutored and trained to perfection. And as time passes front office design just keeps getting better and better. But unless one endeavours to create an experience that the visitor will not ever forget it is all for naught, unless one strives to bring about Visitor delight.