5 Visitor Management Questions Answered

Are you interested in visitor management but confused about the meaning of some of the terms and phrases in the industry? In today’s blog, I’ll answer five questions that explain visitor management meaning and help you get back on track.

What is visitor management?  A definition

Visitor management means the tracking of how much a building is used. Examples of buildings include airports, hotels, schools, universities, shopping centres, office buildings, and more.

Visitor management is also the processes that someone undertakes in order to process visitors, including pre-registration, checking-in, badge printing and security, wayfinding, meeting room booking and more.

Why is visitor management important?

For companies wishing to deliver an exceptional visitor and employee experience, reduce costs, improve efficiencies and ensure the safety of all building occupants, visitor management is very important.

Visitor management can be beneficial in the following ways:

• Automated processes, eliminating errors

• First-class visitors and employee experience

• Frustration-free visitors

• Workplace efficiencies are enhanced

• Costs are saved for Facilities Managers

• Ensures the safety of employees and visitors after Covid-19

Visitor management is important as it allows business operations run effectively and safely. The world is adapting to the changes that Covid-19 has brought upon us; safety has never been more important to the visitor and employee. Employers have a legal responsibility  to keep people safe at work and minimise the risk of coming into contact with the virus. Facilities Managers must have control over who enters the building, what floor they visit, which desk they work from and when they leave. This, of course, is in addition to the number of cleaning and sanitisation processes that workplaces must adopt.

You can read more about the benefits and importance of visitor management system in our recent blog.

What types of visitors go to offices?

Examples of office visitors include:

• Employees

• Current customers/clients

• New customers/clients

• Cleaners and facilities personnel

• Contractors

• Potential new hires

• Delivery personnel

What is visitor experience?

Visitor management meaning can also be defined as your visitor's experience. We remember positive experiences and, more importantly, we talk about them. Whether it was a visit to a museum, store, hotel or business, we come away from great experiences and we can’t wait to share that experience. Trip Advisor alone has over  800 million reviews  on their website; imagine visitors could review their experience in your HQ, what would they say?

A good visitor experience means your visitor has a frustration-free journey, from when they are invited to your building, to when they leave. Positive experiences happen when people receive all the information they need before they arrive, are processed quickly and are treated well when they are there.

A bad experience looks like:

• An invite that doesn’t contain enough information

• No information about the meeting host

• No option to pre-register or pre-sign documents

• Reception isn’t aware of your visit, and are unprepared

• Needing to queue to speak to reception

• Waiting for details of your meeting room

• The host isn’t notified and is late to collect them

• No offer of a hot drink, or details of how to connect to wifi

• No directions to the nearest train station or local landmark on their way out

Find out how to improve your visitor management processes.

How should companies handle visitors?

In a connected world where technology and instant communication is a given, companies are expected to keep up with technology and ensure visitors receive an experience that is communicative and safe.

Traditional visitor experience involves:

• Checking in with a concierge service

• Taking a journey through security barriers

• Greeting a security guard to let them through once attended by the host

• Being allocated a separate pass for the barrier system

The traditional visitor management is outdated and it’s easy for this process to become fragmented over time. Relying on employees to provide the same experience for every visitor is risky and can lead to processes being forgotten.

Visitor management meaning summary

We have shared more about how facilities managers can improve visitor management, and the techniques to deliver the best visitor experience, Modern visitor management reengineers end to end visitor experience. In addition, the connected workplace creates cost savings, increases efficiencies, improves productivity, provides a better experience and keeps people safe.

Read our full visitor management guidelines.

Want to learn more about Vpod's visitor management solution? Enquire below.