Managing a front desk is expensive and time consuming. I’ve been on a quest to minimize the cost and management time. It hasn’t worked out very well.

Back in 2009, I wrote about an automated front desk kiosk that sounded like a cool replacement for a receptionist.

I didn’t try it back then, but I liked the idea.

So, a bit over a year ago, we bought Alice Receptionist to greet our clients and others at the front door.

Who the F— Is Alice?

Alice is an automated system. You can see her in action here.

Visitors touch the screen, and the software connects them with a live person (our team works remotely, so they’re available). You can even set the software to detect the presence of a person and connect automatically.

The visitor is greeted by the staff member, who then manages the visit in whatever way is necessary. If it’s a prospective client coming in for a consultation, the staff member notifies the attorney. If it’s someone coming in for a deposition, he or she can be seated in the lobby to wait until the scheduled appointment time. You get the idea: it’s basically a remote video receptionist.

What Happened to Alice?

For more than a year, we’ve been experimenting with Alice to cover the desk when our primary receptionist was away for vacations, bathroom breaks, lunch, etc.

Alice didn’t work out for us.

Why didn’t she work?

• Some visitors walked by her without pushing the button.
• Some visitors got totally stressed out by the lack of a human being physically present.
• Some visitors got flustered by the incredibly simple (push one button) technology.

Most importantly, we worried that it jeopardized the willingness of visitors to write big checks. Alice endangered the transaction. We got especially nervous when clients were coming in to drop off significant payments. We wanted a human being present to facilitate the payment during those delicate final moments.

In theory, Alice makes sense. I still think it’s a good idea. Unfortunately, we just didn’t have confidence in the technology sufficient to keep it up and running. We’re back to human beings sitting up front all the time.

We just sold Alice on eBay. So long, Alice.