In this Speak PR podcast episode, host Jim James reflects on his recent cinema visit to illustrate the communication challenges businesses face in a post‑lockdown world where masks, plexiglass barriers and other PPE disrupt normal auditory and visual cues. He argues that businesses should design their customer experience as if every patron were deaf, providing clear, multimodal signage, written instructions, and automated audio prompts to compensate for muffled speech and blocked lip‑reading. Jim offers concrete recommendations: keep spare masks on hand, redesign ticketing and payment flows that no longer rely on touchless kiosks, lower background music, enlarge menu text, create mask‑free zones akin to smoking areas, and display local COVID statistics to reassure visitors. He highlights best practices from Asian contexts—automated voice queues, tactile pavement cues for the blind—and suggests adopting a “COVID PR lens” that is compassionate, optimistic, values‑based, informative, and digital. Throughout, Jim emphasizes leadership responsibility to move from a survival‑mode messaging to a post‑survival, confidence‑building communication style that reassures staff and customers alike. He closes with a call to action, offering his contact information and directing listeners to additional resources on eastwestpr.com.
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Hello and welcome to this episode of Speak PR. My name is Jim James. And this is the podcast for business owners and leaders who know they've got value locked up inside their organizations if they can just find the most effective and the least expensive ways of communicating that. Today we're going to talk about signage and making people feel comfortable when they go out. The reason is because I've been out to watch the movies tonight. And the experience Frankly, is a little bit bizarre. So I'd like to just share some thoughts and some ways that business owners and operators can make life a little bit better for those people that are going to engage with them during lockdown. As we come out of lockdown, there are many people on the streets. How can we help our company look as though it's warm and open, ready for business, but still abiding by all the regulations required to keep Our customers and our staff safe and sound. Now, first of all, I'd just like to think about signage. Signage before, during, and after. For example, we went to the movies tonight, and the signage in and around the cinema was good, but not great. Luckily, we had masks. But if we didn't have masks, we would have been in trouble because although I booked the tickets online, when I arrived, they asked me if I had. A mask with me. Luckily we did, but if we hadn't, then the experience would have been wasted. So one thing to do is to make sure that you've got masks on hand if people turn up without them. Another is the ticketing and the facilities. So today at the cinema in Bath here, the Odeon, the ticketing machine that we normally use to get the tickets when you put in your code said that due to COVID, The ticketing machine was not working, which meant that we had to then wait in line longer, frankly, than normal for the people in front to communicate with the people behind the counters about what they needed, which took seemingly quite a long time. So what equipment is there that normally works that 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. Now, this is something that I've been thinking about more and more because my daughters say that I shout. Now, I shout because maybe just I'm getting older, but I personally find it extremely frustrating that facilities now have the music on quite loud. But I have a plastic screen, a PPE screen in front of me between me and the person I'm dealing with. I have a mask on. Quite often they have a mask on. And frankly, it's almost unintelligible, the conversation between the person that I'm talking with and the person that, you know, I'm with. Becomes almost impossible. So it adds to some degree of frustration and stress. We're never quite sure that we're communicating properly. Now, another aspect then could be that the signage could be better at the point of sale, giving me some instructions. Another thing they could do is they could turn the music down, or maybe they just have something in writing so that treat me as if I was actually deaf. Why not assume that your customers are deaf? And guess what? If the member of staff is wearing a mask as well as they are in some restaurants and some facilities, then we can't lip read either. So the normal channels of communication that we have are being literally blocked due to all of the paraphernalia that we've got that's intended to keep us safe. But I haven't seen anybody yet in stores, certainly, that is taking this into account. So we need to start thinking of guides for our consumers or our customers. And in the same way that on the sidewalk, certainly in China, where I was living for 13 years, there are special pavement slabs, which are away from the curb that let the blind know that they're close to the edge of the pavement. So what could we do to start thinking about our customers and consumers as though, frankly, they are deaf? Now, I've already put on the podcast earlier about the degree that we expect people on our websites to be able to read, and that there are a number of applications that can be used which do auto-read, so that if someone comes to the website Actually, it would be quite easy for that person to click a button and it will auto-read the website in the same way that now you can have Siri read emails for you. I wonder whether there's some way that we can start to do that. Now, again, 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, what you're doing. So for example, Next customer, please, is automated. The same with DBS Bank, for example, in Singapore. So in Asia, they've got 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, actually, we could do with the teller saying, next person, please, and maybe a light Flashing, so we need some more clues. I think in the absence of audio clues and the traditional clues, what could we do? Now the next thing then is going to be how do we deal with people like me that wear glasses and have masks on? Well, 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. Now, 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 going to be able to see? So for those of us that are perhaps a bit older, maybe the text could be bigger on menus, because I personally now have to either remove my mask or to ask for help. So 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 have got a steamed-up vision? So now then, we look also at just some of the inconsistencies, because in the cinema, we were with people, of course, and the view was you have to have your mask on unless you're eating popcorn or drinking Coke. Well, of course, everybody in the cinema was basically drinking or eating popcorn for the entire movie. And when we came out of the cinema, lots of young people on the street without any masks at all. So we are entering a zone where there is this, if you like, sort of— well, I don't know if there's double standard or there's one standard and there's a standard that's not being followed. But I think we're moving into a zone where there's 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 are we going to do about that? In our own organizations then, I think 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, for example, the staff are not wearing masks and the view is that the patrons will. And in other places it's switched so that the staff are wearing masks. And the patrons are also wearing masks. I'm wondering also whether we need to start thinking about a sort of mask-free zone where people that would like to take their masks off and make that conscious decision, a bit like smoking zones, people could decide to step into an area or a place which is, if you like, a zone that they could maybe relax. Maybe on their own, maybe with others, but could have 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 to comply with, for example, the payments and all the terms and conditions that I have. So lockdown is creating a really strange situation where when you go to the shops, As we all now starting to do, there's this kind of dance with people, and I'm just wondering how we can start to make this seem more relaxed. Is it possible indeed to make it more relaxed? Can we start to think about things like, for example, better music, or you know places where we're saying it's going to be okay, and signage to reassure people saying. Thank you for coming to our store, or thank you for coming to the factory. We're taking the best possible measures. Just a reminder that the number of incidents in our location is only this. For example, in where we are in Baines, the actual number of COVID cases is remarkably small. So could we start to see ourselves as organisations actually reassuring people by giving some official signage? Because not everyone will have seen that. So could we give some community-based information in our facilities, in our establishments, or on our websites to become, if you like, an authority? Not to say we're measuring ourselves, but that we're simply conveying the official statistics. And this brings me down to this idea of leadership, really, that as business owners, we have a duty of care to the audiences that we serve, which are our our staff, our partners, and our customers. And rather than just sort of doing the minimum and saying, please stand here, stand there, and follow the government regulations, could we be a bit more proactive about what we're sharing? Could we actually be saying to people, it's okay, we understand there's an issue, we understand there's COVID, this is what we're doing about it, but 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 neighbourhood, and in this store. I think that would be good practice for the teams as well to know that actually we're going to get through this. So having been to watch a movie, called Tenant, where the people in the future are plotting to come back to the present and to the past in order to assemble a combination of 9 nuclear devices which together would obliterate the present so that those people in the future wouldn't have to live a life with the liability Of what we in our present have created for them. So their idea was that they would destroy the present in order to preserve the future. It's what in the movie 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 but also some resolve, and we're going to do the same thing. They also worked on rebuilding confidence and on a sense of spirit, community spirit. So I think now what I'm seeing when I walk downtown and looking online, I see that there's a survival mode in the messaging, and I'm just thinking, how can we now move to a post-survival mode of messaging. Now, one of the webinars that I was on a little while ago, I spoke about the COVID PR lens, and I defined COVID PR lens as being all communications should be compassionate, optimistic, values-based, informative, and digital. And I was delighted when somebody reached out to me on LinkedIn saying they'd actually used that As a as a paradigm to communicate for their own staff what they were doing. So can we move in our own communications to what I would call the COVID language? And this is about being optimistic. This is about showing inspiration. This is about showing leadership. This is about reassuring people that when they go, like I did tonight to the cinema, that there will be. A pleasant experience, not one that we're just going to endure, but one that we're going to enjoy. And this, of course, will become the secret to us returning to some degree of normality. Now, in this movie Tenet, they do, of course, 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 are 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. But also they see us as examples for whatever they're going to be enduring in their own lifetime. So with that, I wish you. A good weekend and the best of health, and that you're running a profitable business, and that whatever you're doing and however you're doing it, think about communicating for those people that are now having to tackle maybe not being able to hear what you're saying, not being able to read what you've written, not being 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, and ultimately they like to trust the people that they are working with or in the place that they are taking their time. That's our role as communicators, as leaders. So I wish you the best, and if I can help with that in any way, please just reach out to me, jim@eastwestpr.com. You'll find also a number of other tools and ideas on the eastwestpr.com website and also on this Speak PR podcast. So thank you so much. I do hope that you've liked it, enjoyed it, maybe learned a little bit of something. And if you have, please subscribe to this podcast and reach out and maybe if you can leave a rating so that other people know that we're sharing the spirit of post-COVID times together. Thank you so much.
