For most service or medical providers, a waiting area seems like a careless afterthought – lay out some chairs and magazines, and you’re done. But for customers or patients, the waiting area is part of the overall service experience, and sends an important signal about your company or practice.
For example, the chairs should be comfortable and not shoved against each other. Your waiting area doesn’t have to feel like a resort’s front porch, but asking customers to sit elbow-to-elbow is likely to put them in a cranky mood before or during whatever service they’re waiting for.
Similarly, your reading material matters as well. People may be too distracted or nervous to read Foreign Affairs or Harvard Business Review, but companies should offer a decent selection of popular titles and, perhaps more importantly, keep them up to date. A pile of wrinkled seven-month-old gossip rags sends a signal that you don’t care all that much about your customers.
And they’re going to be there for a while (as at an auto repair shop), amenities such as free coffee and Wi-Fi can help customers remain comfortable and productive while they’re waiting. It doesn’t remove all of the hassle of waiting around, but it takes away some of the pain and makes the experience more tolerable.
Conversely, an uncomfortable waiting room experience can make customers irritable, and less likely to react calmly should something go wrong. If customers are uncomfortable, small problems can escalate quickly.
More importantly, taking the time to make the waiting area as comfortable as possible demonstrates a commitment to your customers. Keeping the areas they can see clean and well-lit helps inspire confidence about conditions in the back-of-the-house areas they usually don’t see.
