Two sunday’s ago our computerized check-in system was down for our first service on the East coast. This is never a good thing. I will say that we have been with this company for over 5 years and this is the only glitch we have experienced on a sunday morning. Disclaimer being mentioned. Here is what we do when our system is down:
1. Didn’t panic your families and volunteers need you to be focused.
2. We put a clipboard with a sheet of paper with a check in/check out/cell number categories in each classroom.
3. We gave every parent a tag that says parent so that we could ensure that only parents and volunteers were allowed past security.
4. Explain to each family that our system is down and they are going to have to personally drop their kids off to the individual rooms.
5. Lastly once our system was back online we entered all the kids manually.
So that’s what we did. What is your back up system should things go a rye?
Hey… I think we were a part of the same experience. We average about 1000 kids on a weekend so when it goes down (even for 20 minutes as it was) that's a lot of families. Here's what we do:
1. we always have manual tags on hand.
2.It becomes an "all hands on deck scenario" for staff.
3. We have someone out front (a greeter) explaining "the system's down, but don't worry we're all over it…it might just take a second longer".
I was amazed with how parents gave us grace and we actually impressed with how we had a system in place.
Joe thanks for you input great stuff. I was amazed how graceful our parents were with us as well.