Skip to: Content
Skip to: Section Navigation
Skip to: Site Navigation
Skip to: Search

Share

Working Knowledge

A Monthly Column about Life on the Job

topper.jpg

 By Elisa F. Topper
American Libraries Columnist

Elisa F. Topper is director of the Dundee Township (Ill.) Public Library District and a career consultant. Contact her at working@ala.org.

Column for November 2005


Brushing Up on Patron-Service Skills


Image
I am the circulation manager for a rural library and have recently noticed that staff could use some training in the area of customer service, especially in dealing with patron complaints. We do not have a training coordinator on staff, as we are a small library. Any suggestions on what we can do?
Ready for Training
The other night I stopped at a fast-food restaurant to grab dinner on the way home from work, and I was impressed by the service of a chain here in the Chicago area called Portillo's. In fact, I often comment to friends on the consistently high quality of customer service that I receive there. What puts this fast-food establishment above the other chains? Is it training, hiring the right people, a commitment from management? Probably it is some combination of all three.
At the last Public Library Association national conference in Seattle, a standing-room-only crowd listened to Robert Spector speak about his book, The Nordstrom Way: The Inside Story of America's #1 Customer Service Company. What Nordstrom does is acknowledge that the “customer is always right” and build a long-term relationship with the customer. But does the company invest in a rigid training program in order to provide the best customer service? Surprisingly, no. The key to their success is in hiring nice people and not tying them down with policies and procedures.
Cheryl Gould, a training consultant for Infopeople—a grant-funded project to improve skills of library workers in California—says that in her customer-service workshops, she often sees that people tend to want to follow and enforce rules, but that “stating policy tends to frustrate a customer.... Also, what I hear from workshop attendees is that they don't have the authority to solve problems and when something goes up to the next level, the customer always wins and the employee doesn't feel rewarded for their effort to enforce policy.”
In today's world where libraries are competing with bookstore chains and the internet, it is crucial that we provide the best customer service to our patrons. “Customer service has always been the heart of librarianship—identifying what people want and need and delivering it within the mission and resources of the organization,” says Christine Koontz, director of the GeoLib program at Florida State University in Tallahassee.
Perhaps the first step you can take is to teach staff to always listen carefully and put themselves in the patron's place, and make sure everyone is trained to deal with difficult patrons. Establish clear rules about the extent to which front-line staff can make policy exceptions, and make sure there is always one staff member on duty who is given the authority to intervene if there are problems.
Last year as part of my own library's training day, we hired a consultant to conduct a workshop utilizing the Fish! philosophy, which follows four simple but powerful principles: Be there, play, make their day, and choose your attitude (see more about the Fish! philosophy, including books and films, at www.charthouse.com/fp_principles.asp?). You could devise a similar training session for your staff by simply showing a video and hosting small discussion groups (see resources below), or you might check with nearby library systems to see if you could pool your staffs for a workshop.

Resources

  • Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service by the Disney Institute (Disney Editions, 2003).
  • The Big Book of Customer Service Training Games by Peggy Carlaw and Vasudha K. Deming (McGraw-Hill, 1998).
  • Customer Service Programs in ARL Libraries by the Association of Research Libraries, SPEC Kit 231 (ARL, May 1998).
  • The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: A Handbook for Implementing Great Service in Your Organization by Robert Spector and Patrick D. McCarthy (Wiley, 2005).
    Think & Do: Cultivating Customer Relationships training materials at www.thinkanddo.us.



(c) Copyright 2005 American Library Association