Customer reception: a good impression does not measure everything
In Fribourg, reception may involve an agri-food supplier, a visit to a bilingual industrial company or an enquiry at a university service. The management question is precise: does a positive overall assessment establish that reception was professionally successful?
What the literature establishes
Richard E. Nisbett and Timothy D. Wilson (1977, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) demonstrated experimentally that an overall impression could alter assessments of specific characteristics of the same person. Students exposed to a warm or cold presentation by an instructor rated some of his attributes differently, without correctly recognising this influence. This finding establishes a risk for reception evaluation: ratings covering several dimensions do not necessarily constitute independent measures.
A brief impression is not necessarily empty
Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal (1992, Psychological Bulletin) synthesised studies in which brief samples of expressive behaviour predicted certain interpersonal criteria. Their meta-analysis shows that a short observation can contain relevant information, rather than merely generate bias. It does not, however, demonstrate that a favourable impression can verify the accuracy of an answer or the appropriateness of a referral.
The premature conclusion
It would therefore be excessive to abandon visitor evaluations on the grounds that they are purely subjective. The interpersonal experience is a legitimate dimension of reception, but it cannot replace checks on every other dimension. Visitors may genuinely appreciate an interaction without having the information needed to judge whether the answer they received was correct. (our executive and employee training programmes)
The limitations of an overall rating
These studies do not directly examine reception services in Fribourg: the halo-effect experiment concerns an instructor, while the meta-analysis brings together different situations and criteria. They establish neither the local extent of the phenomenon nor the superiority of any particular questionnaire. In practice, adding questions about competence and accuracy to a satisfaction survey is therefore not enough to make these qualities objectively verified.
A practical check in Fribourg
Within SHR's « Accueil client » programme, one exercise would be to compare visitors' overall assessments with the correctness of the referrals they received over two weeks, using a sample of contacts defined in advance. At an agri-food site, a bilingual industrial company or a university service in Fribourg, correctness would be checked separately against an up-to-date reference of contacts and procedures, in both French and German where these languages are used, without disclosing the visitor's rating to the reviewer. The measure to examine would be the proportion of contacts involving an incorrect referral among those rated favourably, using a threshold set before observation: this would test whether a good impression sometimes conceals a concrete error. To go further: explore the Client Reception training in Fribourg, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Client Reception in Fribourg
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