Customer reception: can highlighting misconduct make it seem normal?
Reception messages often explain a rule by highlighting the breaches that make it necessary. The management question is specific: does stressing observed misconduct encourage compliance, or risk normalising it?
What the literature establishes
Noah J. Goldstein, Robert B. Cialdini and Vladas Griskevicius (2008, Journal of Consumer Research) studied messages encouraging towel reuse in hotels. A message describing other guests' participation proved more effective than a general appeal to protect the environment. This finding shows that information about what others do can guide behaviour rather than merely convey facts.
When the average becomes a reference point
P. Wesley Schultz, Jessica M. Nolan, Robert B. Cialdini, Noah J. Goldstein and Vladas Griskevicius (2007, Psychological Science) studied feedback comparing households' energy consumption with that of their neighbours. Descriptive information reduced consumption among households initially above the average, but increased it among those initially below. Adding a signal of approval for energy-saving behaviour eliminated this boomerang effect: describing a practice and indicating what is desirable are not equivalent.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that simply announcing that most visitors follow the rules is enough. That would overlook both the need for the statement to be true and the fact that these findings concern specific behaviours in specific settings. The more cautious conclusion is to avoid inadvertently presenting misconduct as normal practice, without promising that rewording alone will correct it. (our executive and employee training programmes)
The limits of a well-written reminder
These field experiments do not establish that a normative message improves every reception interaction, particularly in healthcare or safety-sensitive settings. An instruction may remain unheeded because the facilities are inaccessible, unclear or inconvenient to use. Before attributing non-compliance to visitors' attitudes, managers should therefore check that the expected action is genuinely feasible.
A practical check in Sion
Within SHR's « Accueil client » programme, an exercise in Sion could examine waste-sorting messages at reception points in hydropower sites, healthcare facilities, wine estates and Alpine tourism businesses, excluding medical and hazardous waste. At a single collection point, use randomly assigned time slots to compare a factual instruction with the same instruction supplemented by information about visitors' practices, but only where prior observation supports that information honestly. Keeping equipment and location unchanged, record the proportion of observed waste items correctly deposited and the number of observations in each condition. This tests a local behaviour; it is neither an overall measure of reception quality nor permission to invent an exemplary majority. To go further: explore the Client Reception training in Sion in the canton of Valais, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Client Reception in Sion
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