Waiting rooms to welcome rooms

Make your waiting room a welcome room

If you have a waiting room for your customers, take a leaf out of the day spas of the world and make your waiting room special. Make it feel welcoming, inspiring and warm. Change the name and the experience to a welcome room! Get rid of the TV! People can watch TV at home they don’t need to watch it in your waiting room. Instead, why not set the tone and play nice music? Not the radio with annoying DJ banter and news, but nice music that creates a pleasant atmosphere and positively shapes people’s moods. While you’re at it, have some fun and create a playlist for each day. This will also make it an enjoyable environment for your staff.

Include nice lighting, fresh plants, and inspiring reading material … not five-year-old gossip magazines and Readers Digests from the 80s! Make it look like you actually care what people read and that you paid for the magazines rather than scored them for free.

If you have families waiting, make it enjoyable and fun for kids with craft activities — my kids love making masks —that are pretty simple to set up, offer inspiring reading books, up-to-date colouring in sheets, whatever you think will inspire the children. Maybe have a working train set kids can play with. Is it really that hard to do? Just ask them what they’d like to do while waiting, and they’ll tell you! Where do you think I got the idea for craft activity? My 6-year-old. Thanks Millie!

Offer customers tea or coffee or filtered water. Or make a deal with the cafe a few doors down and offer them a barista-made coffee. Most customers would be happy to pay for a cafe-quality coffee or tea while they wait. And if they don’t they can simply say no. But I bet they’ll feel special that you asked.

My old hairdresser

My old hairdresser turned his salon into an art gallery where every month he would exhibit a few local artists. This made the salon an inspiring place to visit as there was always something new to look at and talk about. By the way, he’s only my old hairdresser because I moved too far away. And he always had great music playing as well as tea, coffee, wine, whisky, beer, pretty much whatever you wanted!

Why does this matter?

Your waiting room will show people how much you care. And some may say, “It’s only a visit to the doctor, does it really matter?” Or “They’re just waiting for their car, does it need to be special?” But those who ask these questions have totally missed the point — this is an opportunity to positively shape how people feel, why wouldn't you do what you can to make them feel great.

You may not have a waiting room or have toilets for your customers to use, but this approach of ‘taking care of the details’ and thinking about how to make your customers feel great can be applied to anything. And it should!

What can you do to make your customers’ experience more enjoyable and memorable?

Be imaginative and playful!