We often cherish the serenity, calmness and orderliness we experience when we visit any well established corporate firms, government functions, restaurants, organised social gatherings, schools, retail shops, etc . And we are fascinated by the gentle, but effective pace of movement of staff or protocol as they carry out their duties.
Every body seems to know where everything is, how to get them and resolve one issue or another from one customer or client with effective results. All these make us relax and cherish our visit to such an environment. In other words, we are satisfied.
This however, is different when we visit a rowdy market place or bus station. The uncoordinated movements of persons and materials to and around everywhere gives a lot of confusion which can be frustrating. We usually breath a sigh of relief when we leave such an environment.
Rowdy market places and bus station are not the only places where we have this kind of experience. Some office environment are so noisy and disorderly that one does not want to go back there again.
The difference between the two types of business environment considered above is access control - which is also a way of promoting customer service.
Access control is the selective restriction of access of persons or materials to a place or other resource or simply the monitoring of persons and materials in and out of a place. Physical access control is a matter of who, where and when, that is, who is allowed to enter or exit, where they are allowed to enter or exit and when they are allowed to enter or exit.
Access control is definitely a must in any corporate entity for it to be conducive for business, otherwise such an entity will loose its customer value and ultimately suffer loss. The more we improve on access control, the more our customer value and the more secured our business operations are.
How to go about it is not so difficult. A little coaching or training on the use of tags and passes, log books, identity cards, signs, accessible and restricted areas, key control, construction and use of physical barriers, on a low cost scale will do a lot of difference. While combining these with electronic means of access control e.g., CCTV, scanners, detectors, card reader equipment, electronically controlled barriers, and biometrics which is on the high capital side if affordable, are even a better effective security measure.