Customer reception: is the service language neutral?
In international reception settings, English often becomes the default when people do not share a first language. The management question is precise: does understanding a proposal in a foreign language mean that the conditions under which a choice is made remain unchanged?
What the literature establishes
Boaz Keysar, Sayuri L. Hayakawa and Sun Gyu An (2012, Psychological Science) showed in their experiments that certain decision biases were attenuated when problems were presented in a foreign language rather than in participants’ first language. Their findings notably concern sensitivity to framing options as gains or losses. They invite a distinction between two questions: understanding the words and evaluating what they offer.
Distance that may alter judgement
Albert Costa, Alice Foucart, Sayuri Hayakawa, Melina Aparici, Jose Apesteguia, Joy Heafner and Boaz Keysar (2014, PLOS ONE) observed that the language of presentation could alter responses to certain moral dilemmas. Reduced emotional resonance in a foreign language is one possible explanation, not a universal feature of multilingual communication. For customer reception, the relevance of this research lies not in its moral content but in the possibility that changing languages affects more than intelligibility.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that English makes decisions more rational and should therefore be preferred. These studies do not support that prescription: reducing a bias in an experimental task does not mean improving every service decision. Conversely, they do not demonstrate that reception in a person’s first language is always preferable. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence does not allow us to transfer
These experiments do not concern visitors choosing an access arrangement at a pharmaceutical site or organising a logistics service. Language proficiency, professional habits and practical stakes may alter the results. The common practice of inferring language preference from apparent fluency in English therefore remains a working assumption, not a guarantee of neutrality.
A practical check in Bâle
Within SHR’s « Accueil client » programme, a Basel application could involve reception teams in pharmaceuticals, life sciences, Rhine logistics and international R&D. When visitors must choose between permitted service arrangements, run a two-week trial in which staff explicitly ask their preferred language from those actually available, without changing safety rules. The main indicator would be the proportion of these interactions in which preference was requested before the choice; a supplementary indicator would be the proportion of choices revised after rephrasing in the selected language. This check would verify a practice and identify situations for review, without claiming to measure a cognitive bias or establish a causal effect of language. To go further: explore the Client Reception training in Basel, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Client Reception in Basel
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