Although many conference organisers focus most of their attention on the event itself, the check-in process can set the tone for the activities to follow, so you must ensure that it goes quickly and smoothly.
After all, if your attendees are forced to stand in a long queue before they can even enter, that can set the tone for the entire event and make your job that much harder.
Luckily, there are numerous ways how you can improve the event check-in process, ensuring that your guests can enter almost immediately after arriving.
Let’s explore some of the most powerful check-in trends and practices that have emerged in the past few years.
Even though there are plenty of tools and practices that can help you streamline your check-in process, they all depend on the functionality and convenience of the venue.
Therefore, your first task as an event planner should be to scope out the event venue and make sure that it meets the requirements for a smooth and streamlined check-in process.
You should look for a spacious and convenient entrance area that has a space for processing check-ins, allowing for multiple queues at a time, as well as the equipment for quick QR-code scanning and self-check-in.
And if you can add signage to your entrance area, that will make it much easier to guide the guests and inform them of the possible ways to check-in. After all, if your guests don’t know about the convenient check-in app, most won’s use it, and your effort in setting it up will go to waste.
Today, there are countless solutions and apps that can help you streamline the check-in process. But even though they offer a lot of powerful features, they won’t be very useful if your team doesn’t know how to use them.
That’s why you must take the time to train and prepare your staff for the check-in part of your event, outlining the entire process, familiarising them with the tools that you plan on using, and going through a practice check-in session to make sure that no problems arise.
In fact, you could even think of a few scenarios that might occur during the event and go through them with your team – you don’t want your people scrambling to find answers when attendees are already pouring in and are running into issues.
Even if your staff is well-trained and is able to process the check-ins quickly, sometimes the guests can become the reason for the long queues by asking questions that are not related to the check-in process.
If you’re not prepared for this, your check-in team will end up wasting a lot of time answering questions about the event, its activities, the venue plan, and anything else that’s unclear to the guests, which can create bottlenecks that will be difficult to resolve.
That’s why you should establish a Help Desk near the entrance, where all guests with questions can be directed in a friendly and helpful manner, and without feeling as if they have been ignored.
A Help Desk will not only make the process of checking-in guests much faster but will also help you provide a better experience for your guests, as they can get all the information that they need upon entering the event, making it much easier to navigate.
As we’ve briefly mentioned throughout this article, there are plenty of check-in app options to choose from, which is why any creative events agency that wants the check-in process to go smoothly should take the time to research the available options properly.
Numerous solutions are designed to help reduce friction and manual labour to a minimum, providing your team with all the tools necessary to process and check-in guests in a matter of seconds.
But what should conference organisers look for in a check-in app?
Well, before you even start looking at features of a specific app, you need to make sure that it offers comprehensive support and training materials, as they will be essential for preparing your staff and getting the most out of the available features.
Another aspect you should consider is whether you need access level setting capabilities from the app. For instance, if you have pre-determined seating arrangements in your event, you could limit access to some of the team members so that they don’t inadvertently make changes that could mess up the entire event.
Having access levels also helps clearly assign roles to team members, allowing them to focus on their part of the job, and not have to worry about understanding all the features that the app can offer.
Finally, when choosing an app, make sure that it has all of the most modern features that help make the check-in process go smoothly and without a hitch, even if facing small issues.
For instance, many of today’s leading apps can recognise phonetically similar sounds and names, providing your staff with matches from the list, even if they aren’t sure exactly how to spell it.
Another crucial feature to have is QR code functionality, as that not only helps to speed up the check-in process but also ensures that no spelling or mislabelling mistakes occur.
Finally, when putting together an event for a tech-savvy audience, a creative events agency should consider installing a self-check-in booth where attendees can quickly go through, requiring just one or two staff members to oversee the process.
However, even if you do use self-check-in, it’s advisable to have the traditional check-in line as well, since not all of your attendees will be tech-savvy, and some will just want everything to be handled by your staff, which is something that you should provide if you want all of your guests to have a positive experience when checking-in.
Sarah Hill is a content writer at Seven Events Ltd – leading event management company in Birmingham offering event production, organising conference and team building services in the UK. She started her career in the events industry almost a decade ago as time progressed she became an avid event blogger sharing her insight on corporate event planning.
