Lessons from Naviant: How important is a first impression?

If you go to your local mechanic and upon entering their building you find a waiting room as greasy as the garage your car will be serviced in, followed by a quasi-greeting if any, with no indication on what is next for this already seemingly cold experience, how confident do you feel about the actual service you’ll be receiving?

As an alternative, how would you feel if you walk into a brightly lit warm reception area with friendly staff that welcomes you by name, and personally takes an interest in your visit to ensure you are comfortable and know what to expect?

At Naviant, we understand the value of a positive first impression; hospitality is at the forefront of the Naviant experience. We work in a fast-paced high-tech industry and consider ourselves best-in-class in business process consulting services and enterprise content management solutions. We want to show our customers, both existing and potential, we will be here to take care of them and make them feel confident in our organization.

Our guests are greeted with a warm smile by a Naviant team member who already knows the guest’s name prior to them walking through our doors. As they are checked in, they are provided with an overview of what they can expect for their visit for the day, given a security badge to show others they’re an authorized visitor, and are escorted to their meeting room which commonly involves being greeted by other staff along the way.

The reason our experience is so effortlessly fluid is because of the technology we use to communicate with our team. We use our enterprise content management system, OnBase, to create a process that tracks the information about the visitors and provides access to the information to the appropriate people in a timely manner.

A guests needs are entered into the system by any user that has a guest visiting. This information could range from if they will be taking a tour, who are they visiting with, what they would like to eat during lunch, to any special needs that need to be attended to. The information is stored and routed to the front desk staff who get supplies ordered and meeting areas setup in advance of the visit. Also 24 hours prior to the visit, OnBase sends out a notification to all staff to let them know we have a visitor coming, when they are expected to be at our facility, for how long and if they will be on a tour. This allows our staff to be prepared when they run into a new face in the hallway and an opportunity to ensure their work spaces are neat and clean. Now from our guest’s perspective, we are clearly prepared as they walk through the door greeted by name and everything is in order for them to feel comfortable during their visit.

We give the guest a taste of the technology at their own finger tips as they sign in at the front desk using a tablet and stylus. The information they enter is stored in our OnBase system and is tied to a security badge they are issued. The system uses that information to provide reports back to our administration team on cards that are not returned at the end of the day and need to be deactivated, as well as reporting on how long guests were in the building and what areas they accessed.

Our processes and technology has allowed us to take pride in something so seemingly simple, but has an incredible impact on how others view our organization.

So, I’ll restate my original question, how important is a first impression?

Check out other ways Naviant uses OnBase.