Tips for tenants: creating a great visitor experience in your building

Making a great first impression on visitors is crucial to your company. It impacts brand perception, talent acquisition, client retention, and more. But workplaces in multi-tenant buildings do not usually have total control over the visitor experience from beginning to end. While your company may use a visitor management system (VMS) to streamline key moments like the invitation, arrival experience, and visit follow-up, there are more considerations if your company is in a multi-tenant building.In these cases, the visitor experience starts outside of the workplace, with building security. If your workplace team is not in sync with the lobby or security desk, it’s almost impossible to provide a seamless experience for visitors–and a safe environment for your teams. In this blog post, learn how to connect the ground floor to your office door and provide the best experience for every guest.

Use an access control system to ensure only authorized visitors come on-site

Arriving in the building should be a smooth, pleasant process. It should also be reliably secure, so no one enters without explicit authorization. While your employees may use badges or key cards to access the building, these methods don’t work as smoothly with visitors. The old-fashioned workaround was to send someone down to escort each visitor to your suite. This is still a good option for VIP guests like investors and high profile clients. But for everyday visitors, it’s not efficient or scalable. Your security desk needs a way to grant visitors temporary access to floors and suites, automatically. This is where an access control solution that seamlessly integrates with your VMS comes in handy. An access control system is an electronic security system that authorizes people to enter certain areas. Your building might already use one for employee key cards. It can be used in a similar way for visitors. Instead of physical cards, visitors get time-sensitive mobile QR codes to scan for entry–only once they’ve completed the required registration steps. This ensures no unauthorized visitors get past the front lobby. It also makes it easy for visitors to get where they need to go.And of course, you have control over your workplace’s security too. With a VMS, you can automatically sign visitors into your suite once the security desk approves them. Or you can require additional security measures in your suite’s lobby. For example, you can have visitors sign NDAs or upload health documents in order to enter your workplace.

Automate communication to save your workplace team time and stress

Most multi-tenant buildings rely heavily on manual processes to coordinate visitors’ arrivals. All of those back-and-forth phone calls consume hours each day that could be spent on more strategic, productive tasks.  Real-time communication between your workplace team and the building’s security desk would mean less work for both parties, fewer misunderstandings, and a better experience for your visitors. Encourage your property manager to invest in a unified, automated solution for welcoming visitors from the main lobby up to your suite. With the right technology, your security desk will always be looped in, no phone calls required. Whenever a visitor is invited to your workplace, security’s visitor log will update to reflect all necessary details like their contact details and host’s name. And you’ll receive an alert the moment a visitor arrives downstairs to see you so you can properly greet them.

Drive continuous improvement with visitor insights

It doesn’t matter how great you think your visitor experience is. Your visitors have to think so, too. To know this, you have to ask them. In addition to sending a thank you email after their visit, include a short survey about their experience. This lets visitors know you actually care how they feel, and gives you objective insight into what others think about your team’s hospitality. In addition to qualitative survey feedback, your VMS should provide you with robust analytics. To build a more complete picture of your visitor experience, you can dig into historical visitor data. Discover what days of the week your workplace typically has the most visitors. Use that information to plan ahead and accommodate bigger groups and busier days. With a multi-tenant VMS, your property manager can view visitor analytics at a building-wide level. This can inform decisions around front desk staffing and building amenities.

As a tenant, you can optimize the entire visitor experience via two-way communication with security, building-level access control, and actionable visitor insights. All of this is made easier with intuitive technology designed for workplace visitors. Try Envoy Visitors out in your workplace today, and tell your property manager about Envoy Connect to create a great experience from the minute your guests walk through the front door.