Customers and patients in your waiting room are often bored with prolonged waits before being attended to, be it in healthcare facilities, salons, or banks. However, with patients’ waiting room experience being among the key determinants of patients’ level of satisfaction, you should find ways of reducing the time patients spend in your waiting lobbies. If reducing time is not possible, why not leverage the use of digital signage to reduce your clients’ perceived wait times?
Clients often feel that time is moving slowly if they aren’t engaged with something or someone. While magazines and newspapers can help, lobby signs are a better option. Below are three important messages to showcase in your digital signage network.
1. Educational Content
Waiting in a clinic, salon, or bank hall is inevitable but shouldn’t feel like time wasted. You can use lobby signs to educate clients on various matters related to your niche. For instance, in medical offices, you can use the wait times to educate patients on important health matters. Display videos and graphics with helpful information about common health issues, how to stay healthy, the latest medical news, and more. This will not only be informative to your patients but also gives your facility authority and credibility.
Additionally, you can cover issues related to your patients’ appointments, making them better prepared when visiting the doctor. Digital signs are a good resource to enhance their knowledge base about their prevailing health conditions, causes, and treatment options. This reduces the time spent seeing the doctor, as they won’t have to discuss the basics.
For instance, during the recent coronavirus pandemic, healthcare digital signage can be repurposed to social distancing signs with informative information about the importance of social distance, preventive measures, emergency alerts, and more.
Banks can also provide helpful financial tips to their customers using these directories. Just like doctors’ offices, the signs provide great opportunities to educate your customers about various matters regarding their finances. This includes ongoing special promotions, managing personal debts, investments, and financial planning.
2. Promotional Content
Showcasing your previous work through digital signs is an important part of marketing. This applies to salons and healthcare facilities, specifically dermatology offices, dentists, and surgery clinics. You can promote your products and services to clients using before and after photos and testimonials.
For salons with waiting rooms, you can use this space to inspire your clients with various hairstyles. While they may have already made a decision, spontaneous and open-minded clients might be open to suggestions of the latest trends provided in your salon. For this, make use of digital signage to provide inspiration through look books and photos of previous clients. You can also get more content through social media feeds.
Besides job-specific promotions, you can inform your clients about other services beyond your scope. For instance, you can inform patients about restaurants within your building and any current promotions. You can also run promotional content for various programs, such as charitable events and blood drives. Note that you can earn additional income by promoting third-party products and services from other complementing businesses.
3. Waiting Times and Check-in Instructions
Welcoming visitors to your business for the first time presents the best opportunity to make a good first impression and put your business’s best foot forward. For businesses with a waiting area where guests wait for their appointments, you can use digital signage to introduce your business to new and returning clients.
Arriving patients often look for some guidance on how to check-in, and door signs might have limited information. Even before filling out specific forms or picking queue numbers, they should know what to do or expect. Clients shouldn’t miss their place in line for registering or improperly checking in.
During the check-in process, digital signage eases the acquisition of registration forms, organizing, and categorizing clients. They also eliminate common mistakes resulting from poor handwriting. Displaying a free demo of the procedures to be followed in your business also informs patients of the documents required in advance, which speeds check-in procedures.
Providing clear and concise instructions on your digital signs prevents possible mishaps and misunderstandings while shortening the entire process. Your waiting room signs can be displayed in multiple languages, to serve diverse populations. This is to assist people speaking in foreign languages.
Bottom Line
Proper management of waiting rooms is crucial if you want to achieve great customer satisfaction. Apart from educational, promotional, and guiding content, you can use digital signs for employee communication and entertainment purposes. Entertaining videos creates a relaxed atmosphere that eases the nerves and tension of clients on waiting lists. However, to use digital displays effectively, select the right software, hardware, and media players. Without a doubt, these signs eliminate the old-fashioned appeal of waiting rooms.
Interesting Related Article: “Five Actionable Things You Can Do to Make Your Physician Practice Better for Your Patients“