3 steps to succeed with shared reception
Many office buildings have several tenants who share one common reception. Here are our best tips for success with such a setup.
Common solution
All tenants should use one common solution to avoid confusion and uncertainty among visitors
Contact
Even in unmanned receptions, it should be easy to get in touch with each individual tenant
Necessary information
Visitors should never be unsure of what is happening or what to do. Make sure to create a safe and easy process
Common solution
If all the tenants each have their own solution for receiving visitors and goods at the reception, then it quickly becomes chaotic and unclear for visitors in a shared reception. Therefore, ensure that external inquiries are handled with a common system. One modern visitor system is well suited for this purpose, and can handle everything from visitors, product deliveries, taxi orders and other inquiries. Visitors simply choose which company they will visit, and search for their visitor recipient among the relevant employees. The recipient is automatically notified of the visit by SMS or e-mail, and can receive their guest. We recommend that the employee meets their guest at reception and follows them into the room. This is both a polite and professional approach, which at the same time ensures safety in a good way.
Contact
Sometimes there are visitors who do not have a planned visit, but who want to get in touch with a tenant. This could be someone who wants to submit a job application, get in touch with the company, or have other types of general enquiries. In a shared reception without direct access to the tenants, this can be challenging, and it is therefore important to make contact information easily accessible. Our recommendation is to add a dedicated button for this on the front of the visitor system. In the picture below, it is illustrated how you can split up with different buttons depending on what the inquiry is about. When someone presses the "Contact a company" button, a page with an overview of the various companies, as well as mobile numbers and e-mail addresses to contact them, can be displayed.
Example of the design of the visitor screen in a shared reception. The button "Contact a company" makes it easy to enter into a dialogue with a tenant.
Necessary information
In order to ensure good flow in the reception, without unnecessary confusion and uncertainty, it is important to give visitors the information they need at all times. This starts with placing the registration terminal in a place where it is clearly visible and where it is natural to approach. Examples of this can be on a reception counter, on a wall mount or on a floor stand. Furthermore, we recommend sending out one automatically welcome message to visitors who have checked in. Here you can welcome the visitor and give specific information depending on which tenant is to be visited. This should always include information about what the visitor should do next, whether it is meeting at a specific floor or waiting to be picked up. In addition, this is a good opportunity to give the guest access to WiFi, so that connection can be made ahead of meetings.
Example of a welcome message with useful information that can be sent to visitors
Shared meeting room?
If meeting rooms are shared between tenants, it is important to have a common booking system. Many traditional meeting room bookings are integrated with Office 365/Exchange, making it difficult to share across organisations. A cloud-based common platform is the solution. loop Booking is specially developed for exactly this purpose, and enables all tenants to easily book or request meeting rooms through a web portal. What makes the solution even more flexible is that it is integrated with onVisit, so that participants who are invited to the meeting also receive a visit invitation automatically. When attending reception, they simply check in with a sent QR code. Furthermore, the status and calendars for meeting rooms can be displayed on info screens, and panels can be hung outside meeting rooms that enable direct booking.