Studio Four Design, a Knoxville-based architecture and design firm, helped bring to life a new customer-focused, interactive lobby area for Newport Utilities, in Newport, Tennessee.
The lobby was redesigned to put a spotlight on the Newport Utilities’ new offering of premise fiber optic cable broadband services. Previously, the lobby reflected a traditional utilities business, but now it’s an interactive experience center where customers can see and feel the superior performance of fiber broadband in data delivery, television viewing and telephone service.
“The vision for this project was to improve the customer experience of visitors to our facility as we introduce fiber-optic broadband services to our community,” said Glenn Ray, General Manager for Newport Utilities. “We were looking for a new, innovative way to interact with our customers, and Studio Four Design delivered that for us. The new high-tech lobby is engaging for our visitors and has freed up our customer service team to handle billing, utility service, and outage issues. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.”
Studio Four Design’s philosophy behind the design is to provide a more welcoming environment for utility customers as they enter the building, introduce interactive kiosks to visitors and allow customer service team members to focus more attention on patrons who have billing or outage questions.
The new lobby area features:
- Interactive Television Display – The focal point of the experience area is the interactive television display that will be used for customer demonstrations and learning. A set of four television screens work together to form a large touch screen surface, and with the addition of a controller, can also work independently to display multiple messages.
- Customer Service Workstations – The customer experience area incorporates two work stations for customer service representatives to complete customer orders. There is ample counter space to accommodate displays and product brochures, and the counters are a comfortable height for resting one’s arms. The area has sufficient storage cabinets and shelves to keep a convenient inventory of supplies to facilitate customer/agent interaction.
- Promotional Display – A large screen television adjacent to the interactive television provides an appealing display for videos, presentations or programming content for customer service and marketing purposes.
“The interior design of any business or facility has a major impact on the customer experience of visitors and how employees interact with customers,” said Stacy Cox president of Studio Four Design. “So when it comes to running a successful business, the design of your building and the interior space really matter. Our focus was on achieving the primary objectives of Newport Utilities through the creative and thoughtful design of its lobby area.”
