History of the Check-in app (part 1)

Fellowship Church (FC) had to make some changes to the Children’s church check in process (see my previous post Hyper Growth is hard) to improve the visitors experience, ease the burden on the data entry team, improve upon security, and decrease the time it took to “flip” a service.

FC looked for partners/vendors to build an attendance/security solution and when none would step forward they decided to build it themselves.  Without getting into too many of the details, Rick Chatham, under the leadership of Terry Storch, built one of the first church check-in solutions (pre-dating many common kiosk solutions such as airport check-ins and grocery store check-outs).  Version one was an instant success; so much so we showcased it to many churches and vendors including Saddleback and ACS (Saddleback eventually modeled much of their current self-built check-in from what we showed them).  The success led to such an outside demand that when we left the church and formed Fellowship Technologies, it was the check-in product that sold us.  Reasons for its success include:

• One Line – I can go to any check in station and check in my entire family; multiple activities can be associated with a single check in allowing for adult Bible studies and volunteer opportunities to exist in the same environment
• Unique Code – a uniquely generated “receipt code” provided a security element that while simple dramatically improves upon the inherent weaknesses of a standard member number that can be easily duplicated or abused in custody situations
• One Code – a single code is used for all my children so I don’t have to juggle multiple check-out codes
• Shared Claim Tickets – the claim ticket has two identical halves allowing the parent to tear the receipt in half and share it with an additional guardian
• Security - a “claim ticket” is never printed a second time (you can’t fool the system) and doesn’t contain the child’s information or room (in case the receipt is accidentally dropped)
• Easy Search – asking for the last four digits of Jeff Pelletier’s home phone number is much easier than trying to spell/find his last name
• Friendly Greeter – once the results from the phone search are returned, the check in greeter can become very personal as every name and age for the whole family is displayed

The single line was such a massive improvement for people who need to check in many kids (and themselves) that FC was able to delay classroom openings to only 15 minutes prior to service.  To check out, Fellowship simply positioned one or two people at all classroom exits to quickly validate the receipt code with the code on the child’s name tag (parents and children would stick them on their shirts); checking out 100’s (even thousands) of children was only slowed by the physical width of the hall or doorway. 

Bottom line… FC was able to collect attendance and offer security while only providing a mere 30 minute gap between services making it easier to offer attractive service time options.  Next post... version 2.0.