Traffic Log Can Help Save Money

Many businesses and organizations waste a lot of money staffing during non-productive hours. Worse, they almost always under staff during busy hours.

Download the attached Excel spreadsheet to start tracking the people coming into your place of business. I’m giving this away for free, but please don’t redistribute it under your own name. However, feel free to modify it for your own office’s use.

The log is ideal for determining office hours, staffing hours, etc. Generally, a front desk receptionist should be put in charge of the sheet. I recommend a minimum of two weeks of data before making any decisions based on the data. A two-month period is more ideal, however.

There are three separate sheets. The log itself (which is all the necessary input you’ll need to do), a paper log printout if your front desk person does not have access to Excel at their desk (they can then re-enter the data later - although my personal opinion is that this is double-work), and the analysis sheet which is what you’ll want to look at in depth. You’ll be surprised when you see the data.

One quick note: the sheet is filled with “sample data” to give you an idea how it works. It has reasons for visits that correspond to an insurance office (my background), but you could easily replace those with any reasons you need. Be sure your reasons on the analysis sheet also match in order for your computer to correctly compile the data.

From this data, you’ll be able to determine what time, if any, would be a good time to close the office for lunch. You’ll be able to determine what hours to cut back. I should point out that if your office already runs on “banker’s hours”, you might not be getting the data you need. You can’t possibly know what hours your office is missing out on if there is no one there to see when people are coming by. Think about expanding your hours a bit to try this out for two months. Of course, you’ll need to update your voicemail and website to let your customers know you have more available hours so you can find out if they’ll take advantage of them. If you just want to try it temporarily, you can always post the new hours as “Expanded Summer Hours”, for example.

Technorati : Excel, efficiency, office, traffic

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