If you are a business manager, you might never have considered planning out the waiting room in your office. After all – your responsibility is limited only to the premises your own office and your employee’s workspace, right? Wrong. You have to be proactive and creative for planning waiting room furniture.
Here’s why – humans have a tendency to judge their environments right from the moment they encounter them for the very first time. Thus, whether you like it or not, your investors, customers, delivery boys and even your employees are making judgements about your business right from the time they enter the office. A lot of people mentioned here will use the waiting room and thus it becomes critically important to plan the waiting room effectively.
Here is the Only Guide You Will Need to Generate Ideas for Maximizing Seating in Your Waiting Room in 2019
Understand the Frequency of Visitors
If you are running a clinic, your core business is dependent on the visitors coming into your office. Hence, the waiting room is as important as your working space. Additionally, you can easily check the number of patients you have daily and hence plan for the seating capacity of your waiting room.
If you are thinking about the waiting room in a more traditional sense in an office, you might have to think a little harder. Have a look at the entry logs at your reception desk and estimate the number of people who visit your office and have to use the waiting room.
Now add 25% to this number and you will have a reasonable capacity of the waiting room in mind. Most businesses don’t need a waiting area that has to host more than 20 people, at max, in one go.
Be Aware of the Needs of People Using the Waiting Room
Now, you have to understand the very opening of this advice – people are making judgments about your business from the moment they enter your office. Want them to know more about your business? Show your accomplishments in the reception area or the waiting area.
At the same time, you have to be aware of their needs in the waiting room or waiting area. To begin with – they will need comfortable seating before you can invite them to their specific appointments. This means that you can’t just stuff the waiting area with seats in rows and expect people to be comfortable there.
Some other needs they might have are working tables and separation units. The tables can be mobile enough for someone to use, just in case the waiting period is long. At the same time, the separation unit like partition screens will help you physically distinguish the waiting room from the rest of the office.
Let Your Office’s Interior Plan Reflect in the Waiting Room Furniture as Well
If the waiting area is anywhere near the reception desk, there will already be enough branding in place to reflect the company’s brand. What you will need on top of this, is a synergy between the furniture in the waiting room and the one in the office. You don’t have to match them precisely, but the waiting room furniture should be able to give a sense of what one can expect if one enters the office.
For instance – if you have a very collaborative space with relaxed work culture, let that reflect in your waiting room area by giving the people more space and using relaxing colour tones. This ensures that people feel like they are a part of the business even when they are just waiting to see someone.
In Conclusion
Since the waiting room is one of the initial points of contact for any prospective customer or visitor, you have to be careful when you are planning for it. We can help you with this. Give our team a call or reach out to us via email, and we will give you a free interior design consultation session!
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