An introduction to the visitor management systems
Do you know who came for the office repair last week? Did you catch who came late to school today? Do you know whose that suitcase is? Simply, can you say your students are safe in the school?
If yes, thumbs up for your visitor management system!
If no, this article will talk all you should know about school visitor managements and how you can address above problems.
Why visitor management is important?
Creating a secure school premise is very important. It will help your students and staff to feel more comfortable and secure in the school.
Furthermore, knowing that all strangers to school are tracked will make parents send their children to schools in peace of mind.
A School Visitor Management system keeps track of important data like name, contact number, address, photo, purpose to visit, etc. of your visitors. And what’s best? You can retrieve these data whenever you want.
What are visitor management techniques?
Have you ever noticed that your visitors are wandering about where to go or what to do next at your entrance?
This will be the worst first impression for your visitor. And don’t forget; it’s easier to keep negative experience!
So, a systematic technique or a process is essential to welcome and manage the visitors at the entrance.
Let’s see how this process works.
Recognizing visitors and make them comfortable
Every visitor who walks through your entrance needed to be acknowledged or recognized. Your way of recognizing the visitors may be either labour intensive approach or an automated approach.
What’s the best of these two?
Well, humans are unpredictable; receptionist mood will determine the look of reception. But on the other hand, an automated reception will welcome your visitors in the morning and evening in the same way.
Identifying visitors
Your visitors may be daily visitors like your staff and students or random visitors like parents and contractors.
Indeed, identifying these guests is critical to make them feel comfortable. Because, your regular visitors will be excited to be remembered, while the random visitors will need guidance to walk through without wandering around.
Though this task is critical, the receptionist’s simple question “How can I help you?” will start to build up the conversation.
But what if she is on a long phone call? Here comes the automated visitor management system!
Signing in
Security check-up at the entrance depends on your guest. That’s why identifying your guest is critical.
Whether the visitor has to enter details like name, contact information, photo, etc. at the entrance or not depends on the type of your guest.
You can use a traditional log book to collect these data as a hard copy or else use an automated system which you can impress your visitors with technology!
Connecting the host
For you visitor, there is nothing worse experience than asking dozen of people to find someone in your office.
So, it is important to connect them with the host either by a receptionist’s phone call to the host or by escorting the visitor to the host.
But what if another guest is at your door at the moment?
A digital Visitor Management system won’t let that “another visitor” to wait at the entrance. It will notify the hosts when a visitor is there to meet him/her through email or SMS.
Checking out
You should never underestimate the last impression of your visitor. Check out is the step which complete the process of visitor check-in.
So this is the last point to show your professionalism at same time validating a secure visitor management process.
When your visitor leaves, the receptionist will mark the check-out time and will collect all the tags, keys, etc. she gave to the visitor.
But this will be a headache to your receptionist if there are number of visitors. She will turn number of pages back and forth to find the visitors check-in details.
However, instead of turning and playing with number of pages, the visitors can check-out through one or two taps if you use a digital visitor management system.
Keeping a visitor log
You never know when you will need your visitors’ information. Perhaps to send some files or to ask for another meeting, or may be because there was a robbery!
In a situation like this, your visitor log will be your life saver.
But, thicker log book means more time you have to waste.
So, why don’t you use a digital visitor log which won’t take a second to retrieve what you want?
Is a paper based visitor register is good?
Even the students and teachers of your school use a laptop or computer for their needs, so why do you still keep a wide book and a pen at the entrance for your visitors?
Here I listed few downsides of paper based visitor register;
- Need more space to keep the visitor registers safe.
- More time consuming for filling data as well as to retrieve data.
- It will badly affect for your image.
- More possibility to loss data.
Well, is there a way to overcome all these? Why not? Just replace you visitor log book with a digital visitor management system!
Do schools need a visitor management system?
‘Working with Children Check Act’, implies that schools are bound to safeguard students in the school. Hence, keeping track of people who enter your school will be best to ensure students’ safety.
So, don’t you think keeping a database of your visitors’ details is one of the best steps to ensure students safety?
What are the features in a best school visitor management system?
When it comes to school visitor management system, there are few important features which should be specially embedded with that system.
Let’s see!
- Registering school visitors
- Taking records of late arrivals and early departures of students
- Print visitor badges
- Notifying visitor arrivals through email or SMS
- Identifying regular visitors
- Comfortable group registration
- Keep track of visitors’ assets
- Keeping visitor records
You will be excited to experience all these features with tons more with the best school visitor management system in Australia, edPass. Book your 30 days free trial just now!
How to setup and maintain your school’s visitor management system?
Perhaps, now you are thinking, “Hey, Why don’t we have a system to manage visitors in our school?” Aren’t you?
Great! So let’s start with hardware you need.
iPad and stand
Since iPad are common and easy to use, the visitors will be comfortable with iPad. However, using a stand for iPad is optional. You can just keep iPad on top of the front desk or fix it to wall.
But, make sure it is at a comfortable location for your visitor.
Badge printer
Visitor badges are the identity cards of your visitors. A badge printer will print this badge at the moment your visitor sign-in.
And more importantly, you have to choose a badge printer compatible to your iPad.
Visitor Badge role
What’s the use of an empty badge printer? It’s obvious that you need visitor badge role!
Depend on your mind; you can use just plain white roles, colourful roles or expiring badges.
So, here we go! The only thing left is to select the best visitor management system for your school. Just contact us.
New trends in school visitor management systems
If you think just few years back, you may realize that a visitor management system is a good-to have system, but not a necessity for schools.
Anyway, due to many reasons and consequences, this has become a crucial part in school security.
On the other hand, the scope of school visitor management systems are increasing day by day, the developers are continuously adding new features to their systems, thereby to match with all aspects of visitor management.
