Setting up a TV in your waiting room is a standard practice for offices and shops in industries from healthcare to automotive. Many business owners and managers provide on-screen content as a way to engage and entertain customers and clients as they wait.
This is a smart practice because digital content increases guest satisfaction and makes wait times seem shorter. When presented with digital signage, customers report a decreased perceived wait time that makes a 30-minute wait feel like more like 20-minutes, according to a Retail Business Development study.
A waiting room TV serves guests — but there is more to it than just installing a screen and turning on a cable channel. You need to consider what is airing and ensure the TV in your waiting room is providing a positive experience for your guests.
What is on the TV in your waiting room?
Installing a TV and turning on a cable channel may be an easy guest entertainment option, but it’s not a smart plan. With standard cable, you have no control over the content on the TV. You cannot control what the audience sees, which can result in your office inadvertently airing unfavorable and unsavory content to your guests.
Mature Content: While there are limitations on cable content, boundaries are often pushed by many major networks. You can’t rely on cable restrictions for limiting the amount of mature content coming through your television. Businesses that often have children in their location need to be especially careful about restricting this type of content.
Disturbing or Offensive Content: Waiting room TVs often air news stations. This content may include mature content not suitable for everyone, as news stations often cover disturbing or violent stories and controversial topics.
Political Content: During election season, cable channels are focused on covering each candidate’s every move and comment. You should avoid airing this content as it is often a touchy subject that can trigger discomfort, debates, and even anger in guests.
Commercials for Competitors: When airing cable programming, you display the feature programming as well as the commercials. Your audience views advertisements which may include promotions for your competitors. You don’t want to make a customer second-guess their decision to choose your business after seeing an ad for a competitor while sitting in your waiting room.
Untargeted Entertainment: When you tune into a cable channel, you select a style of programming for your audience, but it is not always fully targeted. You don’t control the content playlist so you can’t be sure what will air or if it will completely appeal to guests in your waiting room.
Unlicensed Content: Many businesses don’t realize that you can be sued for playing copyrighted music and airing unlicensed content to guests in a store or office. By presenting regular cable programming at your business, you can open yourself up to legal ramifications.
Placing a TV in your waiting room is a smart way to entertain customers and clients, but it’s important to remove offensive and inappropriate content and air the right type of programming.
What could – and should – be airing on the TV in your waiting room?
You can provide TV entertainment in your waiting room without tuning into cable programming. Through Private Label TV, you can create custom content playlists that put you in control over what your guests see.
Targeted Programming: You don’t have to rely on the programming decisions of cable channels. With Private Label TV, you can choose your own selection of popular national television shows like The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and The Today Show, or movie trailers and sports shows.
Custom Video Content: Along with national shows, you can also use custom-created videos in your digital signage content playlist. You can choose from a library of videos that are specifically targeted to your audience (such as auto info videos for a car dealership or health related videos for a doctor’s office) or create your own so your content speaks directly to your target audience.
Video Promos: When you control the TV content, you dictate how advertisements are used. You can keep out competitors’ ads and infuse your playlist with promos for specials, products, and services offered by your establishment.
Branded Content Wraps: Custom digital signage content further expands your on-screen media. You can add branded content wraps that frame your main content so you can present additional information to your audience. This gives you opportunities to reinforce branding and share important messages through the TV in your waiting room.
Content Feeds: Content wraps may include static messaging or fluid feeds that display messages as a ticker across the screen. Feeds can be set to automatically update based on the news, social media activity, and weather, or set to a specific list of predetermined messages.
Automated Messaging: Digital signage even makes it possible for you to adjust your programming in real-time to cater to outside circumstances, without management on your part. You can customize digital signs using weather, time, and day parting to automatically adjust the content playlist based on outside factors (for example, when it starts snowing, a digital sign in a tire store will switch to programming about snow tires).
With private label TV and digital signage, you have multiple options for customizing the programming, messaging, and appearance of the content on the TV in your waiting room.
You aren’t restricted or limited to what is airing on cable programming. You are in control of what your audience sees and when they see it. This helps you avoid pushing away customers while finding multiple opportunities for connecting more deeply with your audience.
Are you using TVs in your waiting room? Do you really know what is playing on the screens and what you are presenting to your guests? Find out how you can take control of your waiting room entertainment with private label TV and digital signage by scheduling a free consultation with a Spectrio representative.