Customer reception: being heard does not mean getting your way
In Zurich, reception teams in financial services, insurance, tech and the European headquarters of international groups often have to apply conditions they cannot change. The management question is specific: can allowing customers to explain their situation before communicating a decision improve perceived fairness, even when the answer remains unfavourable?
What the literature establishes
E. Allan Lind, Ruth Kanfer and P. Christopher Earley (1990, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) experimentally investigated the links between voice, control and procedural justice. Their findings indicate that the value people attach to having a voice is not confined to the opportunity to influence the outcome. For customer reception, this suggests distinguishing two things that are often conflated: being able to explain one's circumstances and being able to secure an exception.
When the procedure becomes a reference point
Kees van den Bos, E. Allan Lind, Riel Vermunt and Henk A. M. Wilke (1997, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) examined how people evaluate their own outcome when they do not know other people's outcomes. Their experiments show that information about procedural fairness then becomes particularly important in judgments of the outcome. At reception, where customers often do not know how comparable situations are handled, this mechanism offers a relevant hypothesis, not evidence that can be transferred directly.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that simply letting customers speak will make them accept a refusal. That would turn a finding about perceived justice into a persuasion technique, although these studies do not establish that an unfavourable decision becomes acceptable in every situation. A genuine opportunity to speak should not be presented as negotiating power when the rule leaves no room for discretion. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What these data do not allow us to promise
These studies use experimental designs rather than observations of Zurich reception teams operating under confidentiality or compliance requirements. They demonstrate neither increased retention nor fewer complaints in these settings. Practice must also distinguish useful listening from collecting personal details that are unnecessary for handling the request.
A practical check in Zurich
Within SHR's « Accueil client » programme, one possible application is to observe, over two weeks, interactions resulting in an access restriction, a referral or a refusal within a Zurich team. For each interaction, record without personal data whether the customer was able to explain their circumstances before the decision was communicated, then offer the optional item “I was able to make my point of view heard”, with the responses “yes”, “partly” or “no”. Compare the proportion of “yes” responses according to whether that opportunity was observed, separating decision types and reporting the response rate. This measure checks the experience of having a voice; without random allocation of practices, it does not establish their causal effect. To go further: explore the Client Reception training in Zurich, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Client Reception in Zurich
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