Announcing Envoy Virtual Front Desk for scalable workplace operations

Envoy powers the places where people work best together. We find that when a company is thoughtful about their workplace, things simply get done faster, better, and with a lot more day-to-day enjoyment. What's not so joyous, though, is the confusion that happens when you show up to an office and are greeted by an empty front desk with nobody in sight. Maybe someone's supposed to be there, maybe not, maybe they're on lunch—maybe you got the wrong address—but there you are with no one to help. What's needed is someone to talk to—not a sign-in sheet, not a security guard from some other company, not even some fancy automated kiosk to sign in (of which we have a great product, by the way!)—you just need to talk to a good old-fashioned person.

Well, good luck finding that person. As economic times are doing their thing on companies, these front desk folks have been roped into a lot more, making them unavailable for you. Perhaps they're now responsible for more office management. Maybe they're running around dealing with vendors, contractors, caterers, new hires, etc. Maybe some executive has roped them into becoming their new assistant, or maybe even this was a satellite office or coworking space that never had someone there to begin with. Whatever the reason, companies continue cutting costs (and unsurprisingly not the associated workload!), and there's nobody there for you. This oversight is not just an inconvenience or a bad brand first impression; it can become a full-on security situation.

Introducing Envoy Virtual Front Desk! VFD acts as an extension of a workplace's front desk experience to offset limited resources, “staff” lean offices, and supplement security and compliance needs. This brand-new product is simple: it lets people press a button on an iPad to start a video call with a human who can help them right there and then. That person could be elsewhere on a different floor in the workplace, it could be backup security personnel, or it could even be someone from a totally different office location. What's important is people are getting someone to talk to who knows what they're talking about—and quickly.

Virtual Front Desk becomes extremely useful in high-traffic situations where there are often delivery people, contractors/vendors/cleaners, or even security situations that require some level of human engagement to complete. This could be at an HQ, at the loading zone, at a back entrance, in a small remote office, in a coworking space, or even in secure facilities like the entrance to a data center. Envoy Visitors today shines as part of critical security infrastructure for physical access to buildings, and VFD only adds to this efficiency. Remote security teams can now visually confirm who's going in and out of their facilities before remotely unlocking the door. Tie that into Visitors' functionality—like invite approvals, ID verification, digital waivers/NDAs, block lists, and the many door access integrations—and securing remote locations becomes an easy standard to implement everywhere. VFD really just gives companies a lot more coverage, everywhere in their buildings.

No workplace can exist effectively without strong insights into how it's operating. This becomes complex when there's more than one workplace to operate and facilities staff can't physically see everything happening at all times. Systematization and measurement become mandatory. Today, VFD pilots automated transcripts of calls to help ensure quality and learn patterns for common questions. We'll soon be launching AI-powered summarizations, automated categorization, and further insights. And, of course, all of this will be fed into the broader Envoy Workplace platform analytics stack that's filterable by geo, campus, hours, etc.

Where VFD can be leveraged even further is by *employees*. It turns out that front desk folks hold an awful lot of knowledge about the business: what to do about lost badges, where the bike room is, where the printers are, what's for lunch, what to do about the spill you just witnessed happen, etc. It often becomes a one-stop-shop for everything workplace related.

Virtual Front Desk today is starting as a simple centrally-managed video call system, but where we're taking it will be even more powerful. VFD will become much more personalized to the exact person interacting with it, leveraging the latest advancements in AI. Employees will be able to pull out Envoy Mobile or go to an Envoy kiosk in any workplace and give prompts like: "Book me a meeting room in 10 minutes", "Where's the first aid kit", "Reserve me a desk in our London office next week … oh and reserve me a parking spot" We want VFD to become a scalable personal assistant for everyone in the workplace, allowing extreme levels of efficiency, safety, and convenience.

Virtual Front Desk is available today, and you can find out more here. Lots hasn't been mentioned in this post, so plenty more to look through. We have a webinar coming up too, “Rethinking the Welcome: Introducing Envoy’s Virtual Front Desk,” on August 28th at 10am PT, so be sure to check that out! And as always, please give us your feedback—though we're proud of the product we're launching, it's still early days, and we aim to rapidly iterate on it. If you or your team want to participate in early tests and experiments as we iterate, sign up here, we're building a program around this. We want to make Virtual Front Desk the perfect personal assistant for everyone in the modern workplace.

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Larry.

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