Another Use for Surveillance
Last night, my girlfriend and I were hanging around in Borders, looking for a book that she was interested in reading. After having looked it up in their computer, we spent about ten minutes wandering around the section it was supposedly located in, trying to narrow down exactly where it was.
After a while, I started looking around for an employee to help us out, and I became aware of the black bubbles on the ceiling that contain surveillance cameras. A thought occurred to me: traditionally, the employees at Borders walk around doing their jobs, and sometimes, they ask me and other shoppers if I need any help finding anything. Most of the time, people (myself included) just say "No, thank you," and life goes on.
But, if you're a security guard, and you have an eye in the sky, then you would have a much easier time spotting the customers that are actually lost and really need help. It's not difficult; yesterday, when I started feeling lost, I started appearing lost, wandering around aimlessly with a purpose, but not any specific direction. I looked around a lot.
Chances are good that no employee is actually sitting there at Borders in front of a bank of monitors watching customers for the purpose of security. But since they have the infrastructure in place, why not let customer service use it? Set up a dispatcher to watch customers, spot the ones that appear to need help, and give them a means to tell employees which of the customers they should try to assist.
If you went so far as to tell people that's what the cameras are there for, instead of making them feel like they're being monitored for security reasons, they might actually appreciate the presence of the cameras instead of feeling like crooks.
After a while, I started looking around for an employee to help us out, and I became aware of the black bubbles on the ceiling that contain surveillance cameras. A thought occurred to me: traditionally, the employees at Borders walk around doing their jobs, and sometimes, they ask me and other shoppers if I need any help finding anything. Most of the time, people (myself included) just say "No, thank you," and life goes on.
But, if you're a security guard, and you have an eye in the sky, then you would have a much easier time spotting the customers that are actually lost and really need help. It's not difficult; yesterday, when I started feeling lost, I started appearing lost, wandering around aimlessly with a purpose, but not any specific direction. I looked around a lot.
Chances are good that no employee is actually sitting there at Borders in front of a bank of monitors watching customers for the purpose of security. But since they have the infrastructure in place, why not let customer service use it? Set up a dispatcher to watch customers, spot the ones that appear to need help, and give them a means to tell employees which of the customers they should try to assist.
If you went so far as to tell people that's what the cameras are there for, instead of making them feel like they're being monitored for security reasons, they might actually appreciate the presence of the cameras instead of feeling like crooks.