ALA08- Xtreme Customer Service or TTWWADI must die

There was an excellent session at ALA Annual in Anaheim called "Would you like an Umbrella with that Beach Blanket? Xtreme Customer Service." Part of the Empowerment mini conference Gail Johnson & Pam Parr spoke about how to be customer activists.

(Originally posted @the strange librarian, here are my notes... )

[My favorite part was TTWWADI (found @the bottom of this post).]

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The gap between Expectations and Reality is where emotions form and problems happen.

Become a Customer Activist- An advocate for customers

• Passionate, fanatically, committed, progressive, protective about their cause
• Closes gap between expectations and reality
• you need a hat
• you need a creed
• Nordstrom customer service: The Tire (and possibly the best customer service story of all time.
  

• Interact with customers so that they want to come back
• Customer Radar- Look at the library through the customers eyes
• Look through the eyes of who is in your community
• Look at how policies and procedures affect them
• Need to have a radar

Remove the barriers

• don't make excuses
• don't blame
• just find solutions.

You must become an Environmentalist

• What kind of environment do we want to have?
• Think about your favorite places. What do they look like/feel/sound/smell like?
• How do you create the same type of environment?
  

Exceed expectations

• need to know what people expect before you can exceed it.
• how do you find out what they expect? You have to ASK them.

All co-workers are partners. Not rivals

• Libraries are extremely hierarchical

Shift your focus

• Shift from being library focused to being customer focused
• what is good for librarians versus what is good for customers- we *always* need to be thinking about what *they* think is good for them. NOT making them conform to us.
• Expectations are influenced by “others…” (other industries... like google (faster, and "good enough"))

Stoplight Rules

• Red rules- things NOBODY can override
• Green rules- rules that can be bent (this is where staff can get confused as to what they can do)
• Yellow rules- when staff is not sure what to do


• It’s important to know the INTENT of the rules and for staff to be empowered to follow them as they see fit. (empowerment story: @Rtiz Carlton, any employee can comp a customer up to $2k without talking to management first.)


• Some rules seem reasonable but when they come into practice, they are ridiculous

Empowerment

• See it
• Own it
• Solve it
• Do it

Words that say "no" set a tone

• Say things in a welcoming way
  
• instead of "no cell phones" try "courteous cell phone use, please" or "you are welcome to use your cell phone in our lobby." & don't forget the signs as you're leaving the building that say, "don't forget to turn your cell phone back on!"

Thinks about the terms we use

• Calling them patrons allows us to patronize them (Stephen Abrams)
• Circulation/OCLC/ILL/Periodicals/Call Number/Reference/Page. No one should have to understand these terms. Use better things. Not "reference" but "questions."
• Purpose of signage is to help people move through something easily and quickly.

Be Emotional Intelligence Activists

• Empathy (not feeling sorry for, but being in their shoes)
  
• No more Golden Rule. Try the Platinum Rule-Treat them like they want to be treated


• The only way we know what people want is to ask them. otherwise we're treating them on OUR OWN assumptions

Attitude

• When you say I can’t, you here "i won't"
• Be open-minded. All the time.
• TTWWADI (“That’s the Way We’ve always done it”) must die
• Be genuine

Environmentalist plus CIA = Customer Activist