What should reception area have?

Originally published by The Mercury News. Re-posted with permission.

It’s good to make a great first impression when welcoming visitors or clients into your organization’s reception area. The reception area is the face of your brand, and you should make sure that it has an immediate warm, welcoming, wow factor.

A sleek reception will not only relate to the positive aspects of the organization, but it will also act as a catalyst for conversations before you get down to real business. Here are the must-haves for the reception areas in a modern office.

Digital sign-in system

With the advancing technology, it would be very awkward to have your visitors or clients line up for hours to write their names and sign to be allowed to access the next point. Too, data privacy is very crucial, and it’s rare to find a customer who is satisfied with having their details exposed.

Having a proper visitor management system will ensure that you meet and exceed the expectations of the number of clients while keeping their details safe. Greetly.com offers a comprehensive visitor management system that makes the reception smarter and impresses the visitors. In today’s times, office security is of prime importance and a smart visitor management tool is your best option to ensure optimum security.

Indoor plants

Introducing greenery with indoor plants has positive wellness benefits as they help to brighten the reception area with a little color. Depending on the intensity of the natural light the reception area gets, there shall always be plants to suit it. Even though most reception areas have low access to natural light, it’s advisable to choose indoor plants which require low maintenance.

Apart from brightening the area, the indoor plants also provide your visitors, staff and clients with biophilic elements that help to enhance their moods. In addition, indoor plants improve the reception area quality by removing volatile organic compounds like carbon dioxide.

Proper lighting system

When designing the lighting system of your reception, it’s important that you pay attention to the details and finding the right balance that will ensure that the reception area won’t appear too stark and clinical or too warm and homey. In your reception, make sure that all bulbs in poor working conditions are repaired or replaced immediately after they are noticed.

You can also use fluorescent tubes that mostly emit light in the blue and white spectrum, making them perfect for illuminating the reception area. The positioning of the bulbs is also crucial as it ensures that the light is properly distributed in the whole room.

Display books

Using magazines with dog-eared pages that have been leafed through beyond their publish date is a complete turn-off for too many visitors and clients who might visit your organization. You should invest in a collection of table books for displays that are relevant at that time.

Make sure that you use that as an opportunity to show that you are a cultured brand in that chosen industry. The topics chosen should offer a wide knowledge about the products being displayed, and the content contained should often be updated to ensure that it meets the market’s requirements.

Comfortable furniture

Choosing comfortable furniture for the office reception is never a lap of luxury. In this case, you have to keep in mind that your clients or visitors won’t be kicking back for a couple of hours on Netflix and so you don’t have to keep them sinking too far into a couch.

A layout that works well with your reception design is important as it helps to avoid cluttering the place. The color of the furniture should not be too reflective on being hit by light rays as it will make the customers very unstable.

In its most basic form, a reception area is a section of your office space that is used to greet all visitors and to provide a waiting area for them until they are met by the person that they came to meet with.

The size of the reception area that you create will be in direct proportion to both the type and size of your business. The sophistication and associated cost of building a stylish reception area, versus a basic one will depend in large part on what happens in the business. All reception areas have several furnishings and components in common:

• Receptionist desk/station
• A comfortable and ergonomically appropriate chair for the receptionist
• Chairs for guests to use while waiting
• A table to hold literature or magazines or to provide a surface for visitors for their purses, their briefcases, or other personal belongings while waiting

A typical medical office reception area will have many chairs to accommodate the possibility that there will be several patients waiting to be seen by the healthcare provider. If the medical office is seeing disabled patients or patients with special needs, there should be attention to details of the width of doors and ease with which patients in wheelchairs can access the reception area safely and independently. The height of the counter where the individual with special needs will be attended to is also important particularly if the patient is in a wheelchair.

Many medical office reception areas are also usually equipped with a restroom which is close by, to allow ease of access to this area. The same preparations should be considered for the restroom as for the reception area when disabled or special needs patients are expected.

If the medical office caters to children, such as a pediatrician’s office, there should be some form of suitable child decorations and play items for young patients to use while waiting to be seen. Children that are cranky because they are ill will require many distractions to keep them busy and to get their mind off the fear of being treated by a pediatric medical or dental doctor.

If the office that is visited is also a retail location, there will likely be the need for a retail display, or several, depending on the size of the business. In this case, it is best to consider how to outfit the reception area to make it conducive for visitors to be tempted to purchase products.

A reception area with retail products to sell is typically a health and wellness business such as a barber, a beauty salon, or a spa. Lastly, and importantly, when building a reception area, one of the considerations that are necessary is to determine whether or not cameras may be required in this area.

Particularly if there is a retail display area, it is highly recommended that there be a camera or two that would be aimed at both the retail areas as well as the receptionist. There are many effective, low-cost camera solutions that allow for DVR, or digital video recording from cameras that are placed throughout the business, including in the reception area.

If the business that you are opening is a franchise, then it is a good idea to use what the franchisor is recommending as a guide for building their reception area. One of the advantages of buying a franchise is the ability to harness the years of experience that the franchisor has in creating structures that will enable a business to succeed.