subject: Build a More Comfortable Waiting Room: Tips for improving the waiting area your clients spend plenty of time in [print this page] Build a More Comfortable Waiting Room: Tips for improving the waiting area your clients spend plenty of time in
It is not a secret that patients and customers dislike waiting rooms. In fact, many hospitals, physician's practices, and business owners are looking at innovative ways to keep the customer happy while they wait. Online and mobile messaging of wait times, buzzer systems borrowed from restaurants and even streamlined triage are ways that some seek to satisfy those in waiting.
However, these efforts have an adverse effect of bottle-necking appointments making impatient customers wait even more so. Instead of looking at a gimmick to streamline wait times, try looking at making your lobby a more comfortable place to wait.
Renovate
If you can afford it, a renovation may be in order to make you wait space more comfortable.
Add windows for natural light, which is a mood booster.
Buy more comfortable seating with eye pleasing patterns and comfortable fabrics. Place them in clusters so that people in the lobby do not have to stare awkwardly at one another. Allow a few wall seats for the disabled.
Add color to the walls and accents, such as rugs and prints in order to make the room more aesthetically pleasing. Accents also break up the industrial coloring and drabness.
Make the receptionist's desk more approachable. Patients should feel comfortable asking assistance, not like they are in quarantine. Take down the glass windows with speaking holes.
Remove the florescent lighting and replace with lamp light. The florescent light washes out the skin, making patients and customers look and feel sickly.
Redesign
Those with more of a budget can look to some simple redesign options.
Add even more color. Breaking up the drab grays and whites go a long way to making people feel more comfortable.
Cluster the seating. Traditional waiting room formation dictates a chair line that seems that hold the walls in place. Place chairs in groups of four. Add a round a coffee table or stagger them in a V-formation toward the front of the room. This way, no one is forced to stare or play the eye aversion game.
Add floor lamps, table lamps and sconces on the walls and other lamps to get rid of the florescent light.
Add plants for the natural look and increase in oxygen in the room. Plants are also thought to lift the spirits.
Additions
If you cannot perform a renovation or redesign of your waiting room, you can change the ambiance of your waiting room by altering one elementthe television. Pre-formatted inspirational videos with messages and soothing music can calm agitated nerves within the lobby without the big budget. It is one way to change the ambiance and also settle disputes over what to watch on the television. The videos can be custom made to fit any company or institution's waiting room environment.
Whatever you budget may be, changing the ambiance in the waiting room from institutional to inviting is the goal. Look for ways to ease client anxiety, stress, and fears while they wait to see you. As the burgeoning waiting room gizmo industry has proven, the wait can make or break you customer's experience.
