Over many years assisting customers with visitor management software this is been one of the great features that allow for personal differences for users of the system.
A simple example is where William prefers to be called or is known as Bill. I have seen cases where a person’s real name is William but on the business card they use the name Bill. Often in these cases the visitor may only know William as Bill. So what happens when the visitor searches the name Bill as a host. Most of visitor management systems would simply bring up a list of all the people that could be a host starting with the name Bill.
I spoke with a customer yesterday whose name is Christian, when I called Christian yesterday she answered the phone Christy. Same thing applies how many people will know that Christy is a shortened or nickname for Christian.
My wife’s name is Deborah Kim and since she was very young she did not like the name Deborah and has referred to herself as Kim. She has many friends that only know her as Kim, they have no idea that her real name is Deborah. If any of her friends walked up to a visitor management kiosk they would search for Kim as the host.
I remember many times when I was a kid that people were surprised to find out that my father’s real name was Peter. Everybody simply called him speed. I remember situations where people had known my dad for many years but only ever called him speed.
I have a mate and his name is Kim, I don’t think he’s ever liked the name Kim and everybody calls him Bucky. The list goes on if we think about it we will all know somebody who we refer to as one name that is not actually their real name, or maybe we don’t even know.
I just googled to see what I could find about people using different names and found the following example
…..The ‘Glee’ star’s real last name is Sarfati, but Lea went by Lea Michele in her professional life because kids in school used to make fun of her actual last name. In this case I am sure that many people do not know that Lea is not a real name.
So when a visitor management system is set up the data typically loaded into the database comes from existing company databases. Often this can be achieved with active directory or similar. So when the database is loaded with the employee information typically coming from payroll or HR the names of the employees are the real names like Deborah Kim or Kim or Christian. How can we fix this problem with visitor management software.
The best way to resolve this issue is to give the option of an alternative name that can be searched when a visitor signs in at the visitor kiosk allowing the visitor to search for the person as they know them.
