How to use data to improve the visitor experience

Workplace visitors are back. In the first half of this year alone, visitor foot traffic is up 43%. More visitors in the workplace means great things for businesses. It presents more opportunities for companies to show off their brand and create a thriving workplace community. But it also means more planning for workplace managers. Workplace managers have to make sure they’re equipped with the right tools and strategies to welcome an influx of new foot traffic to the office. Plus, the way you welcome into an office is important. The welcome should be thoughtful, efficient, and personalized.So how can you keep up with more foot traffic and meet visitor expectations? The answer: data. You may have a visitor management tool that provides you with visitor analytics. Or you may rely on an old-school manual visitor log. No matter the method you use, you want to make sure you’re regularly looking at this data. Why?Visitor analytics provide you with real-time insights to help you create a better workplace. Data can help you make optimizations to your visitor management process. Plus, it can help you identify areas of improvement to make sure all your visitors walk away having a great experience with your company.In this post, we’ll go over:

• 5 questions to ask when looking at visitor data
• How you can use analytics to improve your visitor management process and beyond

5 questions to ask when looking at visitor data

Imagine this: you pull a report from your visitor management system. It’s full of tables, charts, and bar graphs to parse through. You’re not sure where to begin. Or what questions to ask to get real insights. We’ve got you. Here’s five questions to get you started.

1. Which visitor type comes to the office most?

With a visitor management tool, you can create specific sign-in questions that prompt visitors to provide their reason for visit. For example, your visitors can let you know if they’re onsite for an interview, a delivery, a lunch meeting, and more. Once you’ve got data on what types of visitors are signing in, you can figure out the frequency each group is coming onsite. Maybe you have an office that relies on many contractors coming in each week. Or maybe you have a law office and many clients coming in daily. When you know which visitor type comes to the office most, you can plan ahead and tailor the experience based on visitor type.

2. Which teams invite the most visitors?

Certain teams are going to invite visitors more often than others. Your sales teams might invite prospects to lunch. Or your HR team probably has candidates onsite on a weekly basis. If you have this data available to you, you can set up meetings with the teams inviting the most visitors onsite. Knowing what teams frequently invite visitors to the office allows you to provide them proper training on how to manage their visitors. For example, you can train them on how to preregister visitors, schedule them a desk, or give a great office tour.

3. What time are visitors checking in?

Do your visitors arrive first thing in the morning? Or is the lunch time rush a thing at your workplace? This data can help you make sure that you staff your front lobby and security teams are appropriately staffed. If they know what time visitors are arriving, they can make sure they’re prepared for any influx in foot traffic and give the best experience possible to guests.Arrival data can also help your workplace managers or front lobby team plan their own work schedules better. Not a great idea to have a team meeting when visitor foot traffic is at its heaviest.

4. How much time do visitors stay onsite?

As helpful as sign-in data is, sign-out data is also important. Use sign-out data to track how long on average your visitors stay onsite. Your visitors might be staying for 10 minutes, a few hours, or for the entire span of the work day. Depending on the length of their visit, there may be different considerations. For example, if you see a record of a very short, unrecognized visit that might be a security red flag. If you notice a visitor staying for 4+ hours, you may want to check-in on them and ensure they have a desk for the next time they visit. This data can be valuable for assessing security threats, emergencies, or understanding capacity planning.

5. How did the visitor enjoy their experience onsite?

Rolling out a visitor management process is half the story. Once it’s rolled out, you need to continue iterating and improving upon the process. You want to make sure you’re competing with other businesses with a world-class experience visitor experience.When your visitors sign out after they’re done with their work for the day, your visitor registration system can automatically send a post-visit feedback survey. You can ask your guests questions about their visit, the sign-in process, and if they have any recommendations for improvement.That feedback can provide valuable insights on what’s working well and where you can improve the visitor experience. You might find patterns in the data. For example, are your candidates having a great experience but your clients having a poor one? You might not be investing enough time and consideration on this major visitor type. Or do your visitors feel well taken care of initially but left on their own after a while? Maybe you need to invest more time in frequent check-ins with your visitors.

How to use analytics to improve your visitor management process

You’ve asked the important questions. You’ve pulled the data to answer those questions. Now what? It’s time to see what you can actually do with your data. Visitor analytics can inform improvements to your overall visitor management process and workplace experience. Let’s walk through two action items you can add to your queue once you’ve pulled your analytics report.

Audit your resources

With workplace visitor data, you and key stakeholders can make informed decisions around staffing, budgeting, real estate, and more. Take a look at your current resource and space management plan. Do you have the features and staff in place to support visitor management? Here are a few areas to audit first:

• Front desk and security staffing: Your sign-in data will paint a picture of how many and at what time visitors are arriving. This way you can confidently staff your front desk and security teams with the right amount of people.
• Capacity planning: If you know who’s expected to be onsite at each location, you can order the right amount of lunch and make sure you have desks and rooms set up to handle the capacity.
• Workplace compliance: Your visitor management system will track who has signed or uploaded required documents. It will also allow you to pull accurate reports for audits. This will ensure all workplace locations meet their regulatory requirements. Take a look at the data to make sure your visitors are actually signing these documents and whether you need to make any changes to them.
• Recruiting: You can collect data around candidate no-show rates and figure out what are the busiest days for onsite interviews. With that information, you can make sure you’ve equipped your HR staff to handle busy interview days.

Set up custom sign-in questions

Collecting visitor information before they arrive gives you critical data you can use to tailor the experience for each type of guest. Use custom sign-in questions to better understand their goal of the visit and their needs while on-site. For example, will they need lunch? Will they need a desk? Do they have any special accommodation requests?With this information available to you prior to their visit, you can prepare well. Plus, you can compare these answers with your post-visit feedback survey to see how well you’re doing. For example, if your visitor inputted that they needed lunch, you can ask in your survey how they enjoyed their lunch onsite. —Visitor analytics can help you create a data-informed visitor experience. Data ensures that your efforts on visitor management are helping other areas of the business as well such as resource management, capacity planning, security, and more. All these ingredients combined create a stronger workplace.