Customer reception: offer less to guide clients better?
At the first point of contact, a request that is still unclear is sometimes met with a catalogue of services. The management question is specific: should staff present every possibility immediately, or offer an initial selection to help direct the client?
What the literature establishes
Sheena S. Iyengar and Mark R. Lepper (2000, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) showed, in experimental settings involving consumer decisions and task selection, that a broad offering could attract more interest without encouraging action. In their jam-tasting experiment, the larger assortment attracted more visitors, but the smaller assortment led to purchases more often. Interest generated and actual decisions are therefore not interchangeable indicators.
An effect that does not automatically generalise
Benjamin Scheibehenne, Rainer Greifeneder and Peter M. Todd (2010, Journal of Consumer Research) examined the choice overload effect in a meta-analysis. They found an average effect close to zero, alongside substantial variation across results. Their synthesis encourages us to identify the conditions under which an extensive offering becomes an obstacle, rather than treating the number of options as a problem in itself.
The premature conclusion
One might infer a simple instruction: always offer fewer options at the first point of contact. These studies support neither that universal rule nor an ideal number of options. An initial selection should remain reversible and allow the client to access other possibilities, without turning decision support into a discreet restriction of the offering. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence does not tell us about reception
Choosing jam or a task is not equivalent to being directed to a banking contact, a fashion collection or a trading service. The cited studies do not directly establish the effect of an initial selection in Lugano's Italian-speaking family SMEs. Nor is a shorter reception interaction sufficient evidence of better routing: an error may only become apparent at the next point of contact.
A practical check in Lugano
Within SHR's « Accueil client » programme, a practical exercise would be to test two ways of presenting the same services at a bank, fashion boutique, trading company or Italian-speaking family SME in Lugano: a complete presentation or an initial selection after clarifying the client's needs. Over a period defined in advance, randomly assign comparable time slots to the two approaches, keeping the same opening question in Italian and access to the full offering; in banking, restrict the test to service routing, excluding financial advice. The main indicator would be the proportion of clients whom the first receiving service must redirect because their request falls outside its remit, dividing these cases by the total number of referrals under each approach. Also recording requests to access options not initially presented would help check that fewer routing errors are not accompanied by an overly restrictive selection. To go further: explore the Client Reception training in Lugano, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Client Reception in Lugano
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