How to Streamline Visitor Check-In at Your Industrial Facility

Many industrial facilities still use paper visitor logs. For these companies, once a guest fills out the required paperwork, the receptionist then manually enters the visitor’s information into a database. This process is not only highly inefficient and slow, but it also presents privacy and security concerns for visitors. The reality is their personal information recorded in these paper forms is far less protected than it would be using digital forms secured by a visitor management system. Moreover, visitor information left on paper can be viewed by any and all subsequent guests that enter the facility and sign the logbook. 

With the LobbyFox visitor management platform, guests can quickly and securely check-in at a digital kiosk in the lobby and receive their name badge instantly. The need for manual human involvement is minimized, and receptionists (if there are any) can focus their efforts on welcoming guests and ensuring their satisfaction and comfort. This reduction in paperwork and data entry serves to streamline the guest check-in process and ensures that the lobby doesn’t experience unnecessary bottlenecks that create visitor frustration. Additionally, when a guest arrives, relevant employees are automatically notified by LobbyFox of the arrival, which eliminates the need for the receptionist to make a call or travel within the building to notify the host.

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One of the best ways to streamline visitor check-in at your industrial facility is to take advantage of personalized visitor experiences. Visitor management systems can offer your guests a personalized experience by customizing their check-in procedures. 

Unfortunately, many manufacturers and industrial companies still take a one-size-fits-all approach to visitor check-in. The problem is that guests visit your facilities for many different reasons. Without a personalized check-in process through a visitor management system, your guests will likely end up going through check-in steps that don’t even apply to them. 

For example, a delivery person doesn’t need to sign non-disclosure agreements during check-in. Job applicants might not need to see a safety orientation video. Unnecessary steps such as these create a much slower check-in process and can even confuse guests, which causes even more delays and questions for the receptionist. By using preconfigured (though fully customizable) visitor types in the LobbyFox platform, you can streamline the check-in process at your facility by only giving and gathering the precise information you need from each guest. LobbyFox allows you to easily create any visitor types that you want so that your check-in process is fast and tailored to your guests’ visits.

Many lobbies at industrial facilities experience heavy foot-traffic every day. For this reason, one of the most effective ways to streamline guest check-in is to encourage your visitors to “pre-register” prior to their arrival at your facility. LobbyFox provides robust pre-registration capabilities that will ensure your lobby isn’t getting backed up with guests waiting to be checked in.

With LobbyFox, guests that have pre-registered simply walk up to the check-in kiosk, enter their phone number, and their name badge is printed right away. This process is much faster than checking in on premises as much of the lengthier portion of guest check-in can be completed prior to the visitor’s arrival.

Using the pre-registration feature with LobbyFox is one of the easiest ways to make an immediate impact on streamlining your check-in process. After all, most of the time your facility knows in advance which forms you need your guests to fill out when they visit. Therefore, it’s a great opportunity to speed up your check-in process by getting those forms submitted in advance of your guests’ arrival.

Pre-registration also allows you to send notifications in advance of your guests’ visits with valuable information such as orientation videos, check-in instructions, and directions to their meeting locations within the facility. By using pre-registration features with LobbyFox, you can give your visitors clear instructions making them able to navigate their visit much more quickly and efficiently. Plus, pre-registering brings the added benefit of making your visitors feel valued by showing them you respect their time and you want to make their visit as efficient as possible.

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At your facility, your staff likely sees many of the same faces every day or every week. These frequent visitors present a great opportunity to streamline your guest check-in process. For frequent visitors, it doesn’t make sense to have them go through the same check-in procedure as other visitors, since they already understand the safety rules of the facility and have signed proper documents. 

Instead, you can leverage LobbyFox to store frequent visitor information so that it can be automatically recalled on subsequent visits. LobbyFox remembers if you have a current NDA on file for each visitor, if the visitor has already completed safety forms, acknowledgements, or surveys, or even if the visitor has already watched your required orientation videos. By expediting the check-in procedure for frequent visitors, you can streamline the check-in process for your lobby and make your guests’ visits more productive and enjoyable.