I have recently volunteered to be on site at churches when
they go live with Fellowship One check-in. Not too long
ago, I always passed on these opportunities because I believed it to be a waste
of my time and a waste of the churches money. I had explained to the church
several times and they had watched hours of training videos explaining how to
setup and run check-in. Not only that but I had just been there walking the
church through the check-in process. What was there not to understand?
The issues I will be presenting below I have seen at nearly every
church I have worked with helping them to get up and running on check-in. A common issue is facing the kiosk towards the guests. Anyone that has been to an airport
lately and seen self check-in would say that they had them setup correctly. The
problem was that these kiosks were not for self check-in. In the diagram below you can see the problem.
The “Greeter” manning the check-in station has to turn their back on the people
they are checking in.
I know what you are thinking now and yes… I do come from a
family of artists. Notice the angst on the children’s faces as the check-in
greeter does a poor job of checking them in. It breaks your heart doesn’t it?
The next common mistake that I have seen deals with kiosk
spacing. When churches initially setup their kiosk in an empty room they tend
to place them two feet apart or less. This seems to make perfect sense even
when they are testing and having their staff come up to the check-in station
and pretend to be a family checking in on Sunday. The problem is that you will rarely
ever have just one person checking into a children’s activity. What is more
common is a mother checking in with two to four children orbiting her like satellites
while dad graciously offered to drop them off at the door so he could “park”
the car. What mom probably already knows is that dad only offered because of
the chaos that ensues when dropping the kids off. If he can time it right, all
the work will be done and mom will be ready for coffee and bagels by the time
he makes his entrance. Sorry guys… if I can’t do this anymore because my lovely
wife and mother of my 4 kids has figured this out than neither can you! In the
wonderfully illustrated diagram below, you can see the proper placement of
kiosks.
Lastly we address the issue of lines. Death, taxes, and
lines are inevitable if you are human and a part of a growing, dynamic church.
The only way to avoid lines is self check-in (which will not be addressed in
this blog), teaching your parents not to show up 2 minutes before the service
starts (yeah right), or a moral failure by your Sr. Pastor. I personally favor self check-in. In the first diagram, originally painted by
Van Gogh and skillfully imitated here, you can see a well organized stanchion
lined process for parishioners to flow through.
At the exit will be a friendly greeter assisting families to
locate the next available check-in station. There are several benefits to this
which include a constant state of movement due to the interval of turnover at
the different kiosks. It also helps reduce the chaos factor which can be seen
clearly in the second diagram. But my
personal favorite reason for one line going to multiple kiosks is that you never
get stuck in the slow lane. How many times have you been caught in the grocery
store line behind the woman that can’t figure out how to write a check or the
cashier has the motivation of a man going in for a vasectomy or the guy in
front of you wants to argue that the item was clearly marked on the shelf as
being .48 cents not .55 cents! CAN I GET AN AMEN!? That will not happen with
multiple options available to you at the point of being the next in line.
You do not need to have stanchions and a long
line if you have enough check-in stations. The best approach is to have enough
kiosks to be able to have only two or three families in any given single kiosk
line. This is not always possible and chaos soon follows.
Matthew McMaster
Delivery Manager/Impressionist