Ways of Keeping Customers In Their Place
Posted by SceneR on February 15, 2009
One of the most irritating things that I ever had to deal with when working as a receptionist for various types of businesses was the tendency of many customers and clients to overstep their boundaries in the waiting area. You would be shocked by how many customers just come right behind the desk of an office and start nosing around. Since most businesses keep fairly confidential stuff behind their front desks, this is clearly no place for customers to be.
In most cases, I found that it was fairly easy to keep customers in their place (on the other side of the desk) with just a simple exchange of words. Once you’ve told a client that he doesn’t belong back there, he feels a sense of shame and doesn’t try it again.
However, it’s not always ideal to have to repeatedly tell different customers that they need to get out from behind the desk. In some cases, I found it necessary to hang a sign in the area telling people to stay on their own side of the room. In a couple of rare cases I needed to get post and rope crowd control barriers to physically deter clients from going behind desks where private information was stored. Shocking, isn’t it?