EVA Receptionist - NZ based tech company helps receptionists focus on value adding tasks

Designertech is a tech company based in Auckland, NZ that has a software product called EVA Receptionist. The product is a Visitor Management system that allows visitors/contractors/staff to sign in and out of a business. It frees up time for traditional receptionists who would normally have to deal with arriving and departing visitors, so that receptionists can focus on more value adding tasks.

What does the traditional ‘Receptionist’ role encompass and how has it evolved over the last decade?

Traditionally, the title receptionist was attributed to the person who is employed by a company to receive or greet any visitors, patients, contractors, couriers or clients and answer telephone calls. Most receptionists possess attentiveness, initiative, loyalty, maturity, respect for confidentiality and discretion, a positive attitude and dependability – these attributes make receptionists great candidates for doing other important tasks within a company, and that is why the increasing complexity and competition in the business world have forced the role of a receptionist to evolve and many companies have started tapping into their front desk staff pool for carrying out basic accounting duties and bookkeeping, stock replenishment, data entry, appointment setting, issuing visitor passes and even assuming some security guard access control functions.

Does this mean that receptionists are becoming more instrumental to companies these days?

The answer is ‘it depends’. Unfortunately, oftentimes all the ‘non value adding’ tasks that receptionists have to do get in the way of receptionists maximizing value for their employers – many receptionists still spend a lot of time issuing visitor passes and notifying people that their visitors have arrived, or explaining OSH rules for the office to contractors, or even managing courier deliveries; all of these tasks don’t really add value to businesses – this is all part of ‘the stuff that has to be done’ either due to regulatory requirements or because ‘it’s always been done this way’. And this is one of the reasons our EVA Visitor Management System was created – we saw a way for businesses to optimise the use of their front office human resources by automating all of the ‘non value adding’ tasks that receptionists normally have to do.

What types of receptionist tasks can be automated?

It depends on the business – many of our customers have managed to automate most of their repetitive front desk processes – anything from courier deliveries and issuing visitor passes, through to notifying event organisers and meeting hosts about the arrival of their visitors or attendees; we even have customers who use our system for making sure that no contractors stay in the building after 5pm – our system notifies relevant building managers immediately if there’s a contractor on-site after 5pm.

What inspired you to create EVA Visitor Management System?

Well we are all about solving real business problems with technology, and we saw a need for a system that would allow businesses to automate reception processes, as well as increase their Health and Safety compliance; and with a software solution we could do this at a fraction of the cost of paying a receptionist to do it.

And how did the market react to your innovative system?

The solution has been very well received by the market – we now have customers in 15 countries and the system is available in 10 different languages. Small to medium companies have been able to achieve significant cost savings and OSH compliance with our out-of-the box product, while large enterprises have been able to work with our software development team to customize our product to suit their unique needs. It’s interesting to see how our reception system has transformed our customers’ reception areas – some have promoted their receptionists to other admin roles within the business and moved to a completely ‘human-less’ reception, and some have simply freed up their receptionists to do other important tasks within the business while still having a human at the front desk who can offer visitors tea or coffee, but leave the rest to the system.