Treat customers as if they are deaf. How to solve the impact of PPE on communications.

Today, we're going to talk about signage and making people feel comfortable when they go out during these COVID times. I've been out to watch the movies recently, and the experience, frankly, was a little bit bizarre, and it got me thinking of how we as business owners and operators can make life a little bit better for people that are going to engage with us as we come out of lockdown. How can we help our company look warm, open, and ready for business while still abiding by all the regulations required to keep our customers and our staff safe and sound? When we went to the cinema, the signage in and around the cinema was good, but not great. When we arrived, they asked if we had masks. Luckily we did, but if we hadn't, then the experience would have been wasted, as we wouldn't have been let in. So, one thing to do is to make sure that you've got masks on hand. Another is the ticketing and the facilities. The ticketing machine we normally use to get the movie tickets said it wasn't working due to COVID, which meant that we had to then wait in line longer than normal to get our tickets. So, what equipment is there that normally speeds up the operations that is no longer working? And if it's not working, what can we do to make the process just as easy as it was when the systems were in place? Another point is the experience when you're actually about to make a purchase. This is something I've been thinking about more and more, because my daughters say that I shout out, which may be because I'm getting older, and I find it extremely frustrating that facilities now have the music on quite loud. At the same time, I have a face shield between me and the person I'm dealing with. I have a mask on and so does the other person I'm speaking to, so the conversation is almost unintelligible. So, it adds to some degree of frustration and stress. We're never quite sure that we're communicating properly. Another aspect is that the signage could be better at the point of sale by giving some instructions. Another thing they could do is they could turn the music down, or maybe just have something in writing. Why not assume that your customers are deaf? If a member of staff is wearing a mask as well, as they are in restaurants and other establishments, then we can't lip read either. So, the normal channels of communication that we have are literally blocked due to all of the paraphernalia that we've got that's intended to keep us safe. I haven't seen anybody yet, in stores, certainly, that has taken this into account, so we need to start thinking of guides for our consumers or our customers. In China, where I was living for 13 years, there are special pavement slabs on the sidewalk, which are away from the curb to let the blind know that they're close to the edge of the pavement. I've mentioned some applications before that can read websites for us, so that if someone comes to the website, it would be quite easy for that person to click a button, and it will autoread the website, in the same way that Siri can read emails for you. I wonder whether there's some way that we can start to do that. Coming back to China, quite often in Chinese restaurants and in Chinese banks, there's an automated voice that speaks depending on what you're doing. For example, the voice will say, "Next customer, please." In Asia, they're quite good at giving people instructions without someone actually having to speak. And whilst initially I thought that was a little bit irksome, actually, having now waited in line and where everyone's asking each other if they're waiting in line, we could do with the teller saying, "Next person, please," or maybe a light flashing, so we need some more clues. In the absence of audio clues and traditional clues, what can we do? The next thing is going to be how to deal with people like me that wear glasses and have masks on. I'm sure I'm not the only person who lets their mask down, both figuratively and practically, when we're trying to use Face ID to make payments. Is there some way that we can let people know that it's okay when they're paying or if it's not okay, to find a way for people to know that they're about to be in a situation where they're not gonna be able to see? For those of us that are older, maybe the text could be bigger on menus, because I personally now have to either remove my mask or ask for help. What about if we start to make menus or signage appropriate for those people that might need to take their glasses off, or who need to leave their glasses on, because they've got a mask on, but they've got steamed up vision? Let's now look at some of the inconsistences. In the cinema, the view was you have to have your mask on unless you're eating or drinking. Well, of course, everybody in the cinema was drinking or eating for the entire movie. When we came out of the cinema, there were lots of young people on the street without any masks at all. This makes me think we're moving into a zone where there are going to be some frustrations, and probably there are with some people who abide by these regulations and some people who are not, and what we are going to do about that. In our own organizations, we're going to have to be really clear about what those regulations are and how we're going to deploy them. I notice now in some shops, staff are not wearing masks, and the view is that the patrons will. In other places, it's the other way around. The staff are wearing masks, and the patrons are also wearing masks. I'm wondering also whether we need to start thinking about a mask-free zone where people that would like to take their masks off can do so and make that conscious decision, a bit like smoking zones, which could be, if you like, a space where they are not under that pressure, because I think it's creating a lot of stress. Certainly, I'm finding it quite stressful trying to abide by all the laws, understand and hear what people are saying to me, and comply with, for instance, the payments and all the terms and conditions that I have. Lockdown is creating a really strange situation where, when you go to the shops, as we all are now starting to do, there's this dance with people. Is it possible to make this more relaxed? Can we start to think about things like better music or signage to reassure people that the best possible measures are in place? Could we start to see ourselves as organizations reassuring people by giving some official signage? Not everyone may have seen that, so could we give some community-based information in our facilities, in our establishments, or on our websites to become an 'authority'? It's not to say we're coming up with these facts ourselves. We're simply conveying the official statistics. This brings me to this idea of leadership, that as business owners, we have a duty of care to the audiences that we serve, which are our staff, our partners, and our customers. Rather than just doing the minimum, and saying, "Stand here," "Stand there," and, "Follow the government regulations," could we be a bit more proactive about what we're showing? Could we actually telling people that, "It's okay. We understand there's COVID. This is what we're doing about it. Just relax. Bear in mind that your chances of contracting this illness are very low. Statistically, this is where we're at in our town, in our neighborhood, and in this store"? I think that would be good practice for the teams as well to know that we're going to get through this together. The movie we saw was called Tenant, where people in the future are plotting to come back to the present and to the past in order to assemble a combination of nine nuclear devices, which together would obliterate the present, so that those people in the future wouldn't have to lead a life with the liability of what we in our present have created for them. Their idea was that they would destroy the present in order to preserve the future. In the movie, it's what they call "the grandfather paradox." If they did that, then they wouldn't exist, so how could they destroy the present? We have to believe that our grandparents who led their lives through the war and afterwards would have come out of this with some gusto and some resolve, and that we're going to do the same. They also worked on rebuilding confidence and a sense of community spirit. Now, what we're seeing on the streets and online is a survival mode in the messaging. On a webinar that I was on a while bacck, I spoke about the COVID PR lens which I defined as being Compassionate, Optimistic, Values-based, Informative, and Digital. I was delighted when somebody reached out to me on LinkedIn saying that she used that as a paradigm to communicate to their own staff what they were doing. So, let's see if we can move in our own communications to what I would call the COVID language. This is about being optimistic. This is about showing inspiration. This is about showing leadership. This is about reassuring people that when they go out, there will be a pleasant experience, not one that we're just going to endure, but one that we're going to enjoy. This, of course, will become the secret to us returning to some degree of normality. In this movie, Tenant, they do rescue the present, and they deny the future the ability to destroy our present. In my view, we must take control of the present in order to create a future that our children and grandchildren will be proud of, and that they look back at this time and see what we've created, and they do that not with horror, but with pride and joy. Also, I hope they see us as examples for whatever they're going to be enduring in their own lifetime. Whatever you're doing and however you're doing it, think about communicating for those people that may not be able to hear what you're saying, may not be able to read what you've written, may not be able to speak and articulate to you in the way that they normally can that makes them feel reassured. People like to work with other people, and they like to feel confident and calm. Ultimately, they want to trust the people that they are working with. That's our role as communicators and as leaders.