Consulting Journal: Style - What your visitors see

Style: What your visitors see

by David Blakey

The decor of your reception area says a lot about the kind of firm you are.

[Monday 25 February 2002]

As far as visitors are concerned, there are two kinds of offices for consulting practices: ‘oak-panel’ and ‘open-plan’.

The oak-panel offices

The oak-panel office has access from the lifts to a single reception area. Visitors cannot come out of the lifts anywhere else.

The reception area appears to be self-contained. People from the consulting practice do not use it as a thoroughfare. Consultants arrive, from the lifts or through a door, meet their visitors and then leave with them, back into the lifts or through the door. Some consultants' office have all the meeting rooms around the reception area, so that visitors do not leave this self-contained environment. The meeting rooms are used only for meetings with clients, and not for internal meetings. Some practices go further and usher their visitors into separate rooms when they arrive, so that the visitors do not share a waiting area.

When visitors are taken away from the reception area, they are taken directly to meeting rooms. The floors are laid out so that the meeting rooms are closest to the lifts, with the consultants' work rooms behind closed doors.
This environment gives clients a strong sense of security. They feel that their business information is closely guarded by the consulting practice.

The open-plan office

By contrast, the open-plan office has a reception area where all visitors wait. People from the consulting practice may walk through. The reception area may actually be on the main entrance to the consultants' offices. In the oak-panel offices, the staff entrance is elsewhere.

In the open-plan office, the meeting rooms are less likely to be grouped around the reception area. Visitors may be taken through work areas on their way to the meeting rooms. The meeting rooms may be someone's office. In the oak-panel offices, visitors never go to anyone's office. If a client is important enough to merit a private meeting with a senior consultant, then the consultant always goes to the client.

Which is better?

If you want to know which is better, the answer depends upon the reputation of the consulting practice. If the practice is reputable and if clients expect that it will be able to complete assignments professionally, then the oak-panel style may be better. It radiates affluence, competence and confidentiality.

It is a style that you will be unlikely to carry off successfully if you do not yet have that reputation. The name comes first. The big, successful practices can do it because people know them. You simply cannot give an impression of being big and successful if people have never heard of you - or if they have heard that you are small and not yet as successful as you intend to be.

On the other hand, if you have an open-plan set-up, you should be sure that your clients see things that will make a good, positive impression on them.

Let me give you an example. I worked for a consulting practice that was part of an accounting firm. Part of the consulting practice shared a floor with part of the auditing practice. During year-end audits, the auditing area was empty except for a few support staff. Similarly, the consulting area was often missing the consultants out on assignments. One of the partners told me that it was a good thing to take clients through the floor at these times, because it showed how busy we were. I replied that it merely showed how foolish we were to rent expensive downtown office space for people who were not in the office for much of the time. Even if this thought did not cross my clients' minds as they crossed the floor, they might have wondered if we had any capacity left to take on new assignments from them, if we were so very busy.

And, of course, if clients happened to arrive when most of the consultants were at their desks, they might wonder if we were desperate for work.

So you do have to be careful if your clients are going to see beyond the oak panels.

You might consider designing your offices so that your reception area is to one side of the main thoroughfare, so that your people turn off to their offices before they reach the reception area. You might have the meeting rooms right on the reception area, with offices that can used for meetings a little further away towards the other side of the main entrance, and then the work areas beyond them. You might also keep internal meetings in people's offices, as much as possible.

Some recommendations

Here are some other points for your reception area.

Have a waste paper bin available. No one will dispose of anything confidential in it, but it can be useful.
Have fresh coffee, fruit juice and water available. You might even consider a small buffet, with biscuits or pastries. Ensure that everything is regularly checked to ensure that it is fresh.
Have a telephone available, with a clear note of how to obtain an outside line. People will not use it much, if at all, but it looks good.
Do not have too luxurious a waiting area. It should give your visitors the impression that they won't be there long enough to get comfortable. And you should make sure that they aren't.

However you design it and however you manage it, make sure that your reception area gives each client the impression that you want that client to have of you.

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