POPSUGAR Inc. is a global media and technology company that is parent to lifestyle media publisher POPSUGAR, digital shopping platform ShopStyle, and monthly subscription box POPSUGAR Must Have. Founded in 2005 by Lisa Sugar, she transformed her single-author blog into a massive media empire with 500 employees and a global reach of over 100 million unique visitors per month.

With thousands of people moving through offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City, the front desk at POPSUGAR was overwhelmed. When you’ve built a culture around meaningful relationships—”equal parts best friend and trusted expert”—the last thing you want to do is leave guests waiting to be noticed.

The cure for front desk congestion

At its core is a community of staff, vendors, salespeople, recruiters, retailers, and partners who are often invited to one of the POPSUGAR offices. Reporters drop in for interviews with the CEO or president; VIPs, like key investors, come by for meetings.

“We hate to leave someone waiting for more than five minutes,” said Bjorn Pave, Senior Director of Information Technology. “That’s not the experience we’re known for.”

However, too often, a group of people would arrive en masse, and it’s tricky for a receptionist to take care of everyone effectively at the same time. Faced with a bottleneck, guests would sometimes sit down and coordinate things on their own via email with their host.

“We don’t want anything to fall through the cracks—and that includes the way we welcome people to our offices,” said Bjorn. “We’re a tech-forward company. When our CEO, Brian Sugar, heard about Envoy, he asked us to look into it.”

Moving to Envoy’s seamless visitor management system got POPSUGAR’s reception snags sorted quickly.

Out of the box and ready to go

Bjorn, who’s worked in IT for more than 20 years, is picky about user experience. “When I’m looking at vendors, I don’t want to go with anything I can’t set up right away,” he said. “I was impressed with Envoy from the very beginning.”

Envoy is an out of box solution, and POPSUGAR’s new visitor registration system was up and running in days. That’s very fast—especially compared to other vendors they’ve worked with, Bjorn said.

“Envoy shipped the product on the same day,” Bjorn said. “Nobody expects enterprise hardware in a day. Normally, you’d have to kick down a vendor’s door to get it that fast. I received Envoy while it was still top of mind, and I was excited to set it up immediately.”

POPSUGAR’s welcome process is now more efficient and consistent. Guests get the personal attention they deserve. Hosts can decide how they want to be notified about guests—via SMS, email, or apps like Slack and HipChat—through individual notification preferences.

The welcome screen slideshow feature is also a hit. “Our visitors are really drawn to the display,” said Bjorn. “The whole experience reinforces the POPSUGAR brand.”

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