Customer reception: does visible progress help people complete a process?
At reception, explaining the steps does not always help people understand where they stand in a process. The management question is specific: does showing what has been completed and what remains help clients complete a process that serves their needs?
What the literature establishes
Ran Kivetz, Oleg Urminsky and Yuhuang Zheng (2006, Journal of Marketing Research) show that, in reward programmes, behaviour intensifies as the goal approaches. Their work also indicates that perceived progress can influence effort beyond the objective distance to the goal alone. This establishes an effect on reward-directed behaviour, not a general rule about reception quality.
The mechanism: a process already under way
Joseph C. Nunes and Xavier Drèze (2006, Journal of Consumer Research) examine an artificial initial head start while keeping the remaining effort unchanged. Presenting the process as already started rather than entirely ahead increases completion in the setting studied. For reception services, this suggests a hypothesis to test: explicitly showing steps that have genuinely been completed might support continued engagement.
The hasty conclusion
One might conclude that every visitor should be made to feel almost finished. That would confuse the study of a motivational mechanism with a recommendation to manufacture appearances. Announced progress must reflect a verifiable reality; completing a process is not necessarily desirable if it no longer meets the person's needs. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What these data cannot settle
The cited studies concern reward schemes, not industrial or university reception services in Fribourg. They do not establish that a progress indicator reduces errors, improves understanding or increases satisfaction in these settings. Routine practice has a further limitation: a file may appear almost complete while an external approval, invisible to the visitor, remains decisive.
A practical check in Fribourg
As part of SHR’s “Accueil client” programme, an agri-food site, a bilingual industrial company or a service within Fribourg’s university hub could test a French-German progress indicator showing completed steps, the next action and any approvals still required. Across comparable time slots, alternate usual reception practices with this indicator, without changing the process requirements. The main measure would be the proportion of eligible processes started that are completed without missing documents or corrective return visits, using the same follow-up period. Recording justified withdrawals and external obstacles separately would avoid treating every instance of non-completion as a reception failure. To go further: explore the Client Reception training in Fribourg in the canton of Fribourg, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Client Reception in Fribourg
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