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The front office is the part of a company that comes in contact with clients, such as the marketing, sales, and service departments. [1] The term has more specific meaning in different industries.
The function of front office is to directly get in touch with customers, and is usually the first place that customers get to when they arrive to the company. The front office can discover more information about the customer by asking them questions, also helping the customers out.
Staff working in the front office can also deal with simple tasks, such as sorting out emails, helping out on printing and typing works. Front office staff need to use different skills on technologies too, such as using the printers, fax machines and phone. This is the reason why training is needed before the staffs start to work, although some might only be simple tasks. The most common work for the front office worker will be a mix of getting in touch with customers and also helping out internally in the office. [2]
Other simple tasks, like taking customers’ jackets or serving drinks to customers might also be part of the front office staff’s job. [3]
This is the place where customers first arrive in the hotel, where they can check in at the front desk. Employees working in the front desk will also help customers with problems and complaints. [4]
The front office in the hotel industry, also called the reception area, which the receptionist is the one who get in touch with the customers, most importantly, confirm their reservation and answering their questions. [5] The receptionist in the front office will pick up phone calls from customers too, welcome customers and also help customers checking out at last. [6]
The employees who work in the lobby of the hotel are also part of the front office as they get in touch with customers directly. They will show customers the way and carry the luggage for them. There are different parts in the front office of a hotel, which included reception, providing services when customers asked, mailing information, concierge and employees who manage with money. [7]
The front office of investment banking, mainly deal with sales and trading. As this is the most important role in the front office, employees generally receive the highest salary compared to staff in the same position in other industries. [8] [ circular reference ]
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In some sports businesses, the front office usually gets in touch with the players and organizes activities for them. The front office staff is usually the one that has the highest position in the sports team, who can control the whole team. [9]
The motivation of the front office staff might be low as they are doing repetitive work. This is a very important issue as these staff will get in touch with customers the most and this might affect the profitability and efficiency of the company. The staff might have high level of stress as they might always meet bad-tempered customers. They might get a lot of complaints as well so it is hard for front office staff to maintain their good services. [10]
A call centre or call center is a managed capability that can be centralised or remote that is used for receiving or transmitting a large volume of enquiries by telephone. An inbound call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product or service support or information enquiries from consumers. Outbound call centres are usually operated for sales purposes such as telemarketing, for solicitation of charitable or political donations, debt collection, market research, emergency notifications, and urgent/critical needs blood banks. A contact centre is a further extension to call centres telephony based capabilities, administers centralised handling of individual communications, including letters, faxes, live support software, social media, instant message, and email.
A gratuity is a sum of money customarily given by a customer to certain service sector workers such as hospitality for the service they have performed, in addition to the basic price of the service.
Investment banking pertains to certain activities of a financial services company or a corporate division that consist in advisory-based financial transactions on behalf of individuals, corporations, and governments. Traditionally associated with corporate finance, such a bank might assist in raising financial capital by underwriting or acting as the client's agent in the issuance of debt or equity securities. An investment bank may also assist companies involved in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and provide ancillary services such as market making, trading of derivatives and equity securities, FICC services or research. Most investment banks maintain prime brokerage and asset management departments in conjunction with their investment research businesses. As an industry, it is broken up into the Bulge Bracket, Middle Market, and boutique market.
A waiting room or waiting hall is a building, or more commonly a part of a building or a room, where people sit or stand until the event or appointment for which they are waiting begins.
An office is a space where an organization's employees perform administrative work in order to support and realize objects and goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific duties attached to it ; the latter is in fact an earlier usage, office as place originally referring to the location of one's duty. When used as an adjective, the term "office" may refer to business-related tasks. In law, a company or organization has offices in any place where it has an official presence, even if that presence consists of a storage silo rather than an establishment with desk-and-chair. An office is also an architectural and design phenomenon: ranging from a small office such as a bench in the corner of a small business of extremely small size, through entire floors of buildings, up to and including massive buildings dedicated entirely to one company. In modern terms an office is usually the location where white-collar workers carry out their functions. According to James Stephenson, "Office is that part of business enterprise which is devoted to the direction and co-ordination of its various activities."
A receptionist is an employee taking an office or administrative support position. The work is usually performed in a waiting area such as a lobby or front office desk of an organization or business. The title receptionist is attributed to the person who is employed by an organization to receive or greet any visitors, patients, or clients and answer telephone calls. The term front desk is used in many hotels for an administrative department where a receptionist's duties also may include room reservations and assignment, guest registration, cashier work, credit checks, key control, and mail and message service. Such receptionists are often called front desk clerks. Receptionists cover many areas of work to assist the businesses they work for, including setting appointments, filing, record keeping, and other office tasks.
In the early days of telephony, companies used manual telephone switchboards, and switchboard operators connected calls by inserting a pair of phone plugs into the appropriate jacks. They were gradually phased out and replaced by automated systems, first those allowing direct dialing within a local area, then for long-distance and international direct dialing.
Valet parking is a parking service offered by some restaurants, stores, and other businesses. In contrast to "self-parking", where customers find a parking space on their own, customers' vehicles are parked for them by a person called a valet. This service either requires a fee to be paid by the customer or is offered free of charge by the establishment.
A business service provider (BSP) is one of several categories of service provider in the business world. As opposed to an application service provider which provides application components over a computer network, the services provided by a BSP are more in the area of infrastructure: mail delivery, building security, finance, administration, and human services.
An interactive kiosk is a computer terminal featuring specialized hardware and software that provides access to information and applications for communication, commerce, entertainment, or education.
Time-tracking software is a category of computer software that allows its employees to record time spent on tasks or projects. The software is used in many industries, including those who employ freelancers and hourly workers. It is also used by professionals who bill their customers by the hour. These include lawyers, freelancers and accountants.
A virtual assistant is generally self-employed and provides professional administrative, technical, or creative (social) assistance to clients remotely from a home office. Because virtual assistants are independent contractors rather than employees, clients are not responsible for any employee-related taxes, insurance or benefits, except in the context that those indirect expenses are included in the VA's fees. Clients also avoid the logistical problem of providing extra office space, equipment or supplies. Clients pay for 100% productive work, and can work with virtual assistants, individually, or in multi-VA firms to meet their exact needs. Virtual assistants usually work for other small businesses. but can also support busy executives. It is estimated that there are as few as 5,000 to 10,000 or as many as 25,000 virtual assistants worldwide. The profession is growing in centralized economies with "fly-in fly-out" staffing practices.
Hoteling is a method of office management in which workers dynamically schedule their use of workspaces such as desks, cubicles, and offices. It is an alternative approach to the more traditional method of permanently assigned seating. Hoteling is reservation-based unassigned seating; employees reserve a workspace before they come to work in an office. An alternate method of handling unassigned seating is hot desking, which does not involve reservations; with hot-desking, a worker chooses a workspace upon arrival, rather than reserving it in advance. The use of the term has declined in recent years.
Check-in is the process whereby people announce their arrival at an office, hotel, airport, hospital, seaport or event.
Office administration is a set of day-to-day activities that are related to the maintenance of an office building, financial planning, record keeping and billing, personal development, physical distribution and logistics, within an organization. An employee that undertakes these activities is commonly called an office administrator or office manager, and plays a key role in any organization's infrastructure, regardless of the scale. Many administrative positions require the candidate to have an advanced skill set in the software applications Microsoft Word, Excel and Access.
A bank teller is an employee of a bank whose responsibilities include the handling of customer cash and negotiable instruments. In some places, this employee is known as a cashier or customer representative. Tellers also deal with routine customer service at a branch.
A mission statement is a short statement of why an organization exists, what its overall goal is, the goal of its operations: what kind of product or service it provides, its primary customers or market, and its geographical region of operation. It may include a short statement of such fundamental matters as the organization's values or philosophies, a business's main competitive advantages, or a desired future state—the "vision". Historically it is associated with Christian religious groups; indeed, for many years, a missionary was assumed to be a person on a specifically religious mission. The word "mission" dates from 1598, originally of Jesuits sending members abroad.
Boredom boreout syndrome is a psychological disorder that causes physical illness, mainly caused by mental underload at the workplace due to lack of either adequate quantitative or qualitative workload. One reason for boreout could be that the initial job description does not match the actual work.
Pranknet, also known as Prank University, was a Canadian-based anonymous prank calling virtual community that was involved in a string of malicious pranks and instances of telephone harassment, especially during 2009–2011. Their pranks were coordinated through an online chat room, and convinced others to cause damage to hotels and fast food restaurants of more than $60,000. The group was founded by a man who later referred to himself as "Dex1x1", later identified as a Canadian named Tariq Malik. The group has been linked to nearly 60 separate incidents.
The service blueprint is a technique originally used for service design, but has also found applications in diagnosing problems with operational efficiency. The technique was first described by G. Lynn Shostack, a bank executive, in the Harvard Business Review in 1984. The service blueprint is an applied process chart which shows the service delivery process from the customer's perspective. The service blueprint has become one of the most widely used tools to manage service operations, service design and service.