A receptionist is an employee who takes office or administrative support. Work is usually done in the waiting room such as the lobby or front office desk of an organization or business. The title receptionist is given to the person employed by the organization to receive or greet visitors, patients, or clients and answer phone calls. The term front desk is used in many hotels for administrative departments where a receptionist's duties may also include room bookings and assignments, guest registration, cashier work, credit checks, key controls and services letters and messages. Such receptionists are often called front desk clerks . Receptionists include many work areas to help businesses in which they work, including appointment arrangements, filing, record keeping, and other office work.
Video Receptionist
Task
A receptionist's business duties may include answering visitor questions about the company and its products or services, directing visitors to their destination, sorting and handing out letters, answering incoming calls on multi-line phones or, earlier in the 20th century, switchboards, appointment arrangements , archiving, record keeping, keyboard/data entry and other office tasks, such as sending a fax or sending an email. Some receptionists can also perform bookkeeping or checkout tasks. Some, but not all, offices may expect receptionists to serve coffee or tea for the guests, and to keep the lobby area neat.
A receptionist may also assume some security guard access control function for an organization by verifying employee identification, issuing visitor tickets, and observing and reporting any unusual or suspicious person or activity.
A receptionist is often the first business contact anyone will meet in any organization. It is the hope of most organizations that the receptionist maintains a calm, polite and professional attitude at all times, regardless of visitor behavior. Some of the personal qualities a receptionist is expected to perform successfully work include attention, neat appearance, initiative, loyalty, adulthood, respect for confidentiality and wisdom, positive and reliable attitude. Sometimes, work may be stressful because of interactions with many different people with different personality types, and is expected to perform many tasks quickly.
Maps Receptionist
Opportunities for progress
Depending on the industry, receptionist positions may have opportunities for the network to advance to other positions in a particular field. Some people may use this type of work as a way to familiarize themselves with office work, or to learn from other functions or positions within a company. Some people use receptionist works as a way to earn money while pursuing further educational opportunities or other career interests such as in performing arts or as writers.
While many people who work as receptionists remain in that position throughout their careers, some receptionists may advance to other administrative jobs, such as customer service representatives, dispatchers, interviewers, secretaries, production assistants, personal assistants, or executive assistants. In smaller businesses, such as doctors' offices or lawyers, the receptionist may also be an office manager charged with a diversity of middle-level business-level operations. For example, in the hospitality industry, the role of night receptionists is almost always combined with consolidating and reporting daily accounts, better known as night audits.
When the receptionist leaves the job, they often enter other career areas such as sales and marketing, public relations or other media work.
Some famous people were receptionists at first, such as Betty Williams, a recipient of the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize. Some celebrities have worked as receptionists before they became famous, such as singer/songwriter Naomi Judd and Linda McCartney, photographer, businessman, and wife of Beatle Paul McCartney. Other famous people who started their careers as receptionists or working in the field include civil rights activist Rosa Parks and former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina.
Evolution and new technology
Some small to medium-sized business owners hire a long-distance receptionist directly instead of a full-time home receptionist, thanks to the advancement of communication technology. As indicated by the phrase itself, a receptionist living in a remote area handles phone calls to a company in another location using a private branch exchange (PBX) telephony server. Most modern receptionist services can retrieve messages, screens and forward calls, answer basic FAQs, and fill out web forms. Many services can also schedule appointments and accept credit card orders. Some of the older receptionist services have been around for decades, but these often operate very differently from modern services.
Advancements in the touch screen and 2-way video technology change the way some receptionists work. A new type of virtual video reception system now allows live, home or remote recipients to manage the office lobby area from remote locations. This virtual receptionist not only answers the phone but also greets visitors who come by using motion-detecting cameras to "see" visitors as they enter the building. The remote receptionist is then displayed in a video window on a wall-mounted LCD, a kiosk or an all-in-one desktop computer. Video receptionists and visitors can then communicate via 2-way video, allowing the receptionist to manage one or many office lobby areas from a central location.
The progress of office automation has removed some receptionist jobs. For example, a phone call can be answered by an auto attendant. However, a receptionist with strong office/technical skills and who are also adept in politeness, wisdom and diplomacy is still regarded as an asset to the company's business image, and is still much needed in the business world.
See also
- Secretary
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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