As the saying goes, "you only have one chance to make a first impression." This wisdom holds true whether you're meeting a new person for the very first time or introducing a new prospect to your business.

A good first impression is an essential start to building a meaningful relationship with a new customer. It also sets the tone for the customer’s experience (CX) with your business going forward. To deliver great customer experiences, pay close attention to every detail along the customer journey. It’s important to prioritize your employee experience (EX) strategy in parallel and ensure that your staff has the right tools to engage and delight customers during every interaction. A great employee experience will not only keep your staff productive but also motivated. Workfront's State of Work 2021 study discovered that 49% of workers say they're likely to leave their current job if they're unhappy or frustrated with workplace tech.

The first customer contact often begins with your receptionist and front desk team. They need to efficiently handle or distribute incoming calls and are also the ones who are tasked with creating a great first impression with new customers. However, the past two years have been unlike any other for receptionists in every industry, with unparalleled disruptions which forced them to work remotely using limited tools and legacy technology. Amid these challenges, receptionists were mobilized to hold the frontline, adapting their skills radically to meet demanding customer expectations. It became a daily challenge to answer high volumes of incoming calls and then provide instant information to callers, consult with other departments to transfer calls or relay call-back messages to remote individuals. Staying efficient and productive while keeping wait times to a minimum was a tall order for already overstretched reception staff.

8x8 Frontdesk—a critical enabler for fantastic EX and CX from anywhere

Recognizing the dramatic and ever-evolving changes in employee and customer experiences, we introduced 8x8 platform to advance our customers' increasing need for connected EX and CX-focused communications, collaboration, and engagement. 8x8 is delivered through an eXperience Communications Platform™ to empower enterprises with a modern solution that boosts employee productivity, delights customers, and provides tailored experiences for everyone in the organization for a more agile business.

8x8 Frontdesk is an experience that allows any employee to easily assume the role of a receptionist or front desk attendant. A full-screen operator panel provides instant access to enhanced call handling capabilities without specialized hardware or being physically located in an office environment. Receptionists can work from anywhere, productively and efficiently, paving the way for organizations to improve the employee experience and create a "wow" customer experience.

Five Tips to empower receptionists and front desk staff

#1. Make first impressions count from anywhere

Receptionists are the eyes and ears of your business. They engage with your customers, suppliers, and employees every day.

Supporting this critical role in your organization requires a thorough understanding of the unique challenges that receptionists face: limited time to respond to customers accurately on the phone, routing irate customer calls to the right person quickly, and dealing efficiently with surging call volumes. Take advantage of the technology to combat these hurdles by ensuring that critical communications, information, and contacts can be accessed via their device of choice from anywhere.

Consider using 8x8 Frontdesk to boost receptionists' morale and arm them with the tools needed to efficiently answer and manage every customer inquiry while helping to lower wait times and improve customer satisfaction—with no add-on software to download or install.

#2. Improve productivity with better EX

You'll agree that customer expectations have shifted radically, rapidly, and permanently. So, keeping pace with changing customer demands requires receptionists to have centralized answering for both employee extensions and contact center agent user groups.

Help your receptionist achieve peak productivity with 8x8 Frontdesk. They get an easy-to-navigate user interface, which is already part of 8x8 Work, with a presence-enabled contact directory to view options and customizable away-from-desk settings.

It's a user-friendly solution that will simultaneously improve productivity and bolster EX.

#3 Sidestep on-premises receptionist systems and get the best value

Fortunately, receptionist consoles no longer need a dedicated room or handset hardware that requires receptionists to pull wires from here and plug them there to connect a call to the intended interlocutor.

With 8x8 Frontdesk, your receptionist benefits from a modern, role-based experience without requiring complex console equipment, specialist expertise, or unnecessary costs. Its flexible and intuitive drag-and-drop design enables any activated employee to assume the role of receptionist with minimal prior training.

That means you can assign your best talent to the frontline of your business—anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

#4 Personalize every first contact so callers always expect a great reception

Personalization is at the forefront of customer expectations. Making people feel less like an anonymous caller and more like a person with specific needs is essential. According to Salesforce, 84% of customers prefer being treated like a person, not a number, and another 70% say connected processes are vital to winning their business. This means that cross-functional teams that traditionally concerned themselves only with one part of the customer journey must now consider every customer touchpoint.

The value of accurate, immediate, and personalized responses cannot be underestimated. With 8x8 Frontdesk, your receptionists can greet callers by name and quickly establish the likely reasons for calling based on the dialed inbound number location. Quick action icons and a single company-wide directory with a real-time presence facilitate faster call connection and contact resolution.

#5 Make Microsoft Teams a natural extension of your receptionist's toolset

Suppose that your company uses Microsoft Teams for collaboration and your receptionist prefers using Teams to make and receive PSTN calls. In that case, 8x8 Frontdesk is the right solution for everyone. Your receptionist gets a system-wide status view of all employees and can instantly see who is available to take customer calls, where they can be reached, or when they would be available.

Join over one hundred thousand Teams users who rely on 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams and the “Microsoft solution certified" 8x8 contact center for PSTN calling.

“Director of First Impressions” debut

Customers demand digital-first convenience and are leaning on businesses to innovate like never before. They're seeking not just more personalized experiences, but empathetic ones. On the other hand, engaged employees create better customer experiences, regardless of industry or company size, which helps boost business growth. So, elevate your receptionist with the right tools, so that they become a successful "Director of First Impressions" for your business.

Learn more about 8x8 Frontdesk, read the press release, or get in touch with our team of experts at 1-866-879-8647 (US), +44 333 043 8888 (UK), or online.