How to use pre-registration to enhance your company’s security processes
“Envoy helps us create a welcoming experience for our candidates and guests. The pre-registration feature helps us streamline the security process and minimize confusion.”
- Jessica Lee, Recruiter, Compass
As the service that powers email marketing for more than 10 million people, businesses, and organizations around the world, MailChimp cares deeply about about data security — from their data centers and office to constant vigilance for suspicious login activity. That security also extends to their headquarters.
“MailChimp is appointment only — no walk-ins allowed,” says Sharon Teng, Operations Admin Manager. “We cannot just let anyone come in.”
MailChimp isn’t the only company to place this kind of emphasis on building security. Compass is a technology-driven real estate platform that makes buying and selling a home more intelligent and seamless by developing tools and applications for agents and consumers. The company has welcomed thousands of guests through their global headquarters on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
Their New York headquarters often attracts uninvited outsiders who attempt to see the office or get connected to employees in the building — they shouldn’t be allowed inside, but often pretend they’re there for an interview. Recruiter Jessica Lee says this created a potential risk to employees and a barrier for real candidates — one they didn’t need with up to seven in-person interviews a day at the HQ, and as many as 100 across all their offices.
What do both of these companies have in common? They both use Envoy’s pre-registration feature to make their existing security processes even better.
“The pre-registration feature is such an essential piece for us. We ask all employees to pre-register their guests in Envoy,” says Teng.
Why do companies like MailChimp and Compass love Envoy’s pre-registration feature for security? Let’s dive in.
What is Envoy’s pre-registration feature?
Our pre-registration feature is the easiest way to prepare your team and visitors for a great sign-in experience. When a visitor is invited using Envoy’s pre-registration feature, you’ll get three benefits in one:
- Send visitors an invite email: When a visitor is invited using Envoy’s pre-registration feature, you can send them an automated invite email with details, a map and any custom information they need to know for arrival (directions, parking, etc.).
- See visitors in your dashboard: Invited visitors appear on a special dashboard. When you know who’s arriving and when, you can be better prepared to provide a great experience.
- Speed up sign-in for visitors: When invited visitors arrive, they’ll still need to sign in on the iPad. Once they type their name, the rest of their information will appear automatically. You can also sign in invited visitors directly from the dashboard (great for VIPs!)
How pre-registration helps streamline your existing security processes
You can use our pre-registration feature to enhance and streamline your existing security processes in a few ways:
If your office visits are by appointment only
As we mentioned at the top, MailChimp does not allow walk-ins for security purposes. In that case, if a visitor shows up at your office claiming they have an appointment, how will your front desk coordinator be able to verify this?
Prior to Envoy, employees would email MailChimp’s office management team and say, “I’m expecting these guests,” but there was no way to track and prepare for visitors. Now, all employees are required to pre-register their guests in Envoy.
“Every morning, we print Envoy’s list of pre-registered visitors for the day,” says Teng. “It helps us know when the busiest times will be — and when our front desk person (“Smile Developer”) should definitely be there to greet people.”
If your company needs to verify visitors with the security desk in your building’s lobby
This is something we hear about all the time from our customers, especially the ones who reside in buildings that already provide a security presence in the lobby. This is what often happens: your visitor shows up, shows their ID to security, security calls up to your office’s front desk and … the front desk has no idea whether this visitor should be allowed up or not. With pre-registration, that’s no longer an issue.
Let’s take Compass’s story as an example. As a company that was recruiting heavily, that meant a lot of interviewees were coming in. At the same time, security had to do their job of turning away impostors. Someone would show up and say they had an interview; security would check with Compass’s front desk, who in turn had to connect with someone on the recruiting team to verify. “This was less than optimal — not the first impression we wanted to make on candidates,” says Lee.
Compass now uses Envoy’s pre-registration feature to streamline the security process and minimize confusion. When an interview candidate arrives, security can check with reception, which then checks the list of pre-registered visitors. The online dashboard makes it easy for reception to see who to expect and when they should arrive. Finally, sign-in for pre-registered visitors when they get to reception is speedy; all the primary information populates automatically.
Lee says pre-registering visitors is a piece of cake. “It takes less than 10 seconds.”
Other reasons why our customers love using pre-registration
- Makes visitors feel like VIPs: Our pre-registration feature makes your visitors feel like they’re getting the red carpet treatment — from detailed invite emails with helpful information (like parking and directions) to the speedy sign-in where their details are populated automatically (which can feel almost magical!)
- Minimizes any confusion around the visit: Pre-registering your visitors is an opportunity to provide information that will help their visit go more smoothly. One of our customers, Gateway Church, uses pre-registration for specifically this purpose. “For example, the Tech Building can be confusing to find and people often don’t know where to go,” says Brett Huckins, Executive Director, Technology. “Our pre-registration emails automatically include information about where to park, and how to get from the lot to our building. It’s great because we don’t have to remember to add the information every single time, and it helps us deliver a higher standard of customer service.”
- Cuts down on repetitive, back-and-forth emails: If you’re inviting a visitor to come by over email, you’ll often have to remember the exact details and make sure to include them: directions, parking, etc. If you pre-register visitors in Envoy, you can customize your invite email to include all of those details — which means you never have to type them in again.
- Speed up group or event check-in: If you’re holding an event with a large number of attendees, you can speed up the check-in process using pre-registration. After pre-registering the guests, you can print out their badges and lay them out in advance. Once your guests arrive, all they have to do is check in on Envoy (only takes a few seconds since their information automatically populates) and pick up their badges. Voila!
Interested in using Envoy’s pre-registration feature to make your security processes even better?
- If you’d like to save more time with our host notification feature, it’s easy to give Envoy a test drive with our two-week free trial.
- Read our case studies to learn more about how companies like MailChimp, Compass and Gateway Church use our pre-registration feature.
