Michael Stephens Interview with John Blyberg

If you haven't read it already, get thee over to ALA TechSource and read Michael Stephens' interview with John Blyberg. Lots of good stuff--I'm sure I'll be returning and re-reading this piece for inspiration in the future. A points that jumped out at me (quotes are from John unless otherwise noted):

• I’ve come to realize of late that if a change in library services, technology-based or otherwise, isn’t well grounded in our core values and mission, it just looks funny. (Michael)
  
  
• [I]nformation use has become an expression of self--that’s not something libraries ever accounted for. When I talk about this, I refer to it as the “information experience” because, for the growing number of us who participate in the hive, we build our own network of information and interaction that accompanies us through our lives. We literally construct highly-personalized information frameworks and place a huge amount of personal reliance upon them. Ten years ago, this wasn’t the case.
  
  
• It’s true that we are the voice of authoritative knowledge, but we can package that in ways that are not so paternalistic and present ourselves as partners in discovery. None of this requires technology, but technology has become the nexus of collaboration.
  

John also discusses how the Darien Library is big on Danny Meyer's book Setting the Table, which defines and makes a powerful argument for the value of hospitality. In one of those weird bloggy synchronicities, I randomly went from reading the TechSource post to Char Booth's Infomational post, "Manners v. Hospitality", in which she also references Meyer's book (which I have also blogged about in the past.) One of favorite passages is:

"In every business, there are employees who are the first point of contact with the customers (attendants at airport gates, receptionists at doctors' offices, bank tellers, executive assistants). Those people can come across either as agents or as gatekeepers. An agent makes things happen for others. A gatekeeper sets up barriers to keep people out. We're looking for agents, and our staff members are responsible for monitoring their own performance: In that transaction, did I present myself as an agent or a gatekeeper? In the world of hospitality, there's rarely anything in between."

So when you're done soaking in the TechSource post, take a look Meyer's book. I'll soon have a follow-up post on hospitality and customer service based my experience with customer service training at the Trump Taj Mahal this past week.

Technorati Tags: Customer Experience, Customer Service, hospitality, Library 2.0

My Positive Customer Experience at the Radisson

Just a quick post to share my experience at the Radisson in downtown Minneapolis. I'm feeling very positive about this hotel right now, in spite of two problems in the last 24 hours. The way the Radisson staff (1) quickly dealt with the problems, and (2) otherwise exceeded my expectations in small but meaningful ways has contributed to my satisfaction as a guest.

First, the problems:

• PROBLEM 1: CHECKED IN TO AN OCCUPIED ROOM: After checking in, I made may up to the room. It was rather dark inside, and very clean, so it took me a minute to notice that there was a suitcase in the corner and a laptop on the desk. Uh-oh.
  
• HOW IT WAS HANDLED: I made my way back downstairs. The person who had just checked me in (and also spent a few minutes reviewing the skyway map, and giving me the best route to the convention center) was occupied with a customer. The other desk clerk quickly booked me into a new room, apologizing profusely and (to my ear) sincerely. She asked if I would accept a free breakfast from the Radisson for my trouble, and gave me a very nice looking gift certificate to the excellent "Firelake" restaurant in the lobby.
  
• THE RESULT: I felt happy, and taken care of. The way the situation was handled exceeded my expectations, which have been lowered by previous experiences at hotels in which check-in problems were not only NOT apologized for, but I was left feeling like I WAS THE PROBLEM. (Marriott, I'm talking to you. Twice!) Note to hotels: don't shoot the messenger. Buy him breakfast.
  
  
  
• PROBLEM #2: The business center computer ate my credit card. Yup, I actually had to feed my credit card in to use the computer. Upon sucking in my card, the computer promptly logged in, and then froze.
  
• HOW IT WAS HANDLED: There were a number of signs posted that said "In case of emergency, dial 55". I wasn't sure if this was an emergency, but decided that it was close enough (I wasn't dialing 911 after all.) I dialed and the phone was picked up immediately. The customer service agent said, "we'll have an engineer come up immediately." In 30 seconds flat, the engineer was there. He had my card out in 10 seconds, apologizing all the while.
  
• THE RESULT: I was amazed at how quickly the problem was solved, and felt relieved and thankful that my afternoon did not go down the drain while I tried to deal with the situation. I've had very bad experiences with almost every business center I've ever used in a hotel--and they usually charge through the nose for the privilege of wasting my time. My good feeling at the quick response was heightened, as I logged in to another PC and quickly printed out my pages to discover that...wait for it... there was no charge, save an .08 cents printing charge (penny a page?). No charge for time on the computer. Again, my expectations were far exceeded.

A few other nice perks that have exceeded my expectations and enhanced my experience at the hotel:

• They have Sleep number beds. I've been thinking about buying one. Now I get to try it out for a few nights!
  
  
• Bottled waters in the room--free! I've always hated the way you get into a hotel after a long flight, parched like you just spent 40 days in the desert, and they try to charge you for the big bottle of water sitting out on the table. Well done Radisson!
  
  
• Free wireless and wired internet in the room. None of that $10/day crap!
  
  
• Huge, lit shaving mirror in the bathroom. Love these, and rarely see them in hotels.

These "little" touches help create an overall customer experience that also generates a valuable "background hum of satisfaction". That "hum" probably makes customers a little less upset when something does go wrong--especially when the staff is so adept and empowered to address problems immediately.

Well done Radisson!

Tags: Radisson

Convenience

In my last post on The Human Touch I discussed how a warm, caring human being trumped a crappy, highly inconvenient system. And now for something completely different...

A few weeks ago I went into Philly to meet an old friend for dinner. Mindy had just moved back to the Philly area after too long an absence. She was happy to be returning to the city life, and particularly happy to find that there was an organic food co-op a block from her new place. Over dinner she related the following story.

After getting moved in, Mindy grabbed her environmentally friendly canvas bag and headed down the block to the co-op to do some shopping. The co-op's a fair-sized place, spread over two floors. Lots of veggies, fruits, meats, dairy, knickknacks, and a very active community bulletin board. There's lot's to see, so Mindy takes her time, browsing through the store, taking it all in, while slowly adding items to her canvas bag.

Little by little Mindy starts to feel a little weird. People are watching her. Giving her strange looks. Dirty looks? What's going on? Maybe she's been out in the sticks too long and is just not use to the unfriendly ways of east coast city life? No, people are definitely watching her. And following her. Like maybe she's a thief...

After this goes on for about 1/2 an hour, the manager approaches her and says, "Is there some reason you're putting items in that canvas bag?" Mindy replies, "Um, yes. Because I'm shopping." The manager informs her in a none-too-friendly tone that all customers must use the little plastic baskets for shopping. Mindy says, "Oh, well, I didn't know that." So she grabs a plastic basket and transfers all of her items into it, wondering why no one told her sooner.

She finishes up her shopping, goes to the cashier, pays for her items and goes to the door. At the door she transfers her items from the basket to her canvas bag and walks out.

She's about 1/2 way down the block when the manager comes running out of the store calling, "Miss!! Miss!!". He chases her down, stops her, and says, "I'm sorry but I have to see what's in your bag." Mindy replies, "I'm sorry, are you accusing me of stealing? Here's my receipt." The manager insists he has to see what's in the bag. Mindy says, "Fine" and dumps the contents onto the sidewalk. The manager inventories the purchase against the receipt, and then leaves.

There was no apology.

OK, so here's the punchline. When Mindy told me this story I said, "So I guess you're never going back." Sheepishly she tells me she's already been back. And she's signed up to become a member. WHAAA??? Mindy says, "It's just so convenient!"

The thing is, I understand. Convenience is something we all value. In Mindy's case, she valued convenience so much it outweighed the crappy treatment she received. Of course, the co-op is not only convenient, it offers a niche service. You can't go to the Acme and get the same goods, so the co-op can get away with lousy customer service. They're not only the closest game in town, they're the only game in town. Literally.

In my last post, I related how a human touch -- truly exemplary service -- helped make up for a decided lack of convenience. However Mindy's story revealed how convenience can also trump bad service, especially if the service fills a specific need that is otherwise difficult to fill.

Ideally, of course, we want our libraries to be both convenient and customer-service oriented. We want well-designed systems AND the warmth of caring human contact. Unlike the organic food co-op, however, libraries no longer have the luxury of providing niche market services.

In the good old days (prior to 1994) many of our customers had to come to us. We were the only game in town. But I'm afraid that our prior near-monopoly on information services made some of us a bit too comfortable. We were able to get away with clunky systems, restrictive policies, and unfriendly staff. Customers didn't have much of a choice. Well, those days are gone, and they're not coming back. That doesn't mean libraries don't have a lot to offer, but it does mean we have to be much more aware of the value that our customers place on convenience and friendly service if we expect to remain relevant.

As some of you may know, I'm involved in the management of New Jersey's 24/7 VR service, QandANJ.org. We celebrated our 6th anniversary in October, and in those six years we've collected thousands of customer comments. Two of the most frequent comments we receive are variations on, "Wow, it was great to have a live person helping me." and "Wow, this was just so convenient." I'm proud to be associated with QandANJ because we're translating (or "operationalizing") one of librarianship's core values: removing the barriers between people and information. It's personal service with anytime/anywhere convenience that our customers value.

I'm not suggesting that every library needs to be doing virtual reference (although I do think every library should at least be available through IM.) I am suggesting that if libraries are to thrive, it's imperative that we audit our staff and services with a critical eye toward ramping up convenience and bringing a human touch to all of our services and all primary points of contact with our customers (our front doors, our phone systems, and our websites.)

Tags: convenience, Customer Experience, Customer Loyalty, Customer Service, libraries

The Human Touch

The Human Touch (in which a crazy-bad "system" is made less bad by a live, caring human being)

In November I'm going to be staffing a booth at New Jersey's annual teacher's convention to help promote our statewide virtual reference service QandANJ. A few months ago I filled out the necessary forms to reserve booth space on the exhibit floor in the Atlantic City Convention Center. Soon after, I was sent the "exhibitor's manual" which included another myriad of forms to fill out. So many options! Do we want a table? How many? What size? A table drape? What color? Carpet? Plush? Regular? Color? Chairs? How many? Wastebasket? Do you want the booth vacuumed? How often? Do you want electricity? What kind? (yup, there's different kinds.) Internet Access? Telephone? Help setting up the booth? Taking it down? Will you be sending boxes of stuff? To the warehouse? To the booth? Etc. Etc.

I suppose choice is good, but the quality of the forms that would (hopefully) reflect my choices were not so good. Small type. Poor design. Lot's of repetition. Yesterday I spent the better part of the morning attempting to fill out these many poorly-designed forms, all written in 6 pt type. There were eleven different forms. Eleven. And they had to be faxed to three different places! Each form asked for the same information: Name, phone, email, fax, credit card. Name, phone, email, fax, credit card. Name, phone, email, fax, credit card. Wouldn't it have been great if I could have gone to a single website, entered this information ONCE, then made my selections electronically? Hey, a boy can dream, can't he?

As it was, my morning was eaten up, my eyes were crossing, but there was a single saving grace: The exhibitor hotline. I had called the exhibitor hotline months ago when I first ordered the booth. In fact, I called it five times in one day (the initial forms I used to order the booth were no less confusing.) Each time I called, the phone was answered on the first ring by Kris. Kris was pleasant. Kris was helpful. Kris was friendly. When I called, I was feeling equal parts stressed, frustrated, and stupid. Kris talked to me like I wasn't stupid. She comforted me and made it clear that I could call as often as I needed to. So I did.

Yesterday morning I renewed my contact with Kris. She was still there, picking up the phone after one ring with a friendly greeting, helping me figure out the forms and understand the ramifications of my choices. She even made a few phone calls to assure that I'd get the early-bird rate even though I was a few days past the deadline ("Oh, since this is your first time exhibiting...")

So yes, the "system" sucked, and yes my eyes hurt, but in the end, to be honest, I felt fairly positive about the whole thing. Sure, I would have preferred a system that didn't require me to interact with another human being (and I'm an extrovert). And I certainly would have preferred a system that didn't take 3 hours of my time to communicate some relatively simple choices. But having a live person--a warm, caring, informed live person--available to help me gave a HUGE boost to my overall level of satisfaction.

So I ask: What happens when our customers need help? Whether it's a reference question, a query about branch hours, or someone trying to find out what time storytime starts. Do they get a live person? Do they get an informed, warm, caring live person? Is the phone answered after one ring? Two rings? Five rings?

Kris was my escape valve. Ultimately it's better to design our systems so we don't need an escape valve. After all, what happens when Kris retires, or takes another job? Without her on the other end of the exhibitor hotline I would have been in hell. But even the best systems can only benefit from having an escape valve. A Kris who picks up after one ring. A human touch.

If asked to evaluate my experience as a prospective exhibitor at NJEA I'd give failing grades for convenience, but an A plus for the customer service I received from Kris. Overall, a solid B.

In my next post (on convenience) I'm going to describe a very different experience...

Technorati Tags: customer experience, customer service, design, LibraryGarden, Libraries

Customer Loyalty? It don't enter into it.

Maria Palma over at "Customers are Always" recently posed the question, "What would make you stay loyal to a supermarket?" The question struck me as a bit odd, and my first reaction was to think, "Loyalty? It don't enter into it."

I regularly grocery shop at Wegmans, Superfresh, Target, and Costco, and where I lay my green depends on a number of factors. Each store offers me something different.

I get better service at Wegmans, but it's a longer drive. I love the self-service at Superfresh, and the fact that it's close to my home. Also, they are one of only a handful of stores that sell Goldenberg's Peanut Chews, like, only the most perfect food on the planet. I love the prices at Target and Costco, as well as the opportunity to browse lots of non-grocery items and spend more money on stuff I don't need, but lordy how I want it! Why just last week I went into Target to get a box of cereal and a birthday card and wound up with a new IPOD shuffle. Bliss!

But loyalty? I'm "loyal" to these establishments to the extent that they meet my needs, and not one whit more. Which is to say I'm not at all loyal. I want them, quite simply, to meet my needs. Just give me some combination of:

• what I want
• when I want it
• where I want it
• how I want it
• at a cost I find acceptable (Cost includes price, but is not limited to it.)

Making no overt attempt to tie this post to library services. Arf!

Technorati Tags: Customer Service, Customer Experience, Customer Loyalty, Wegmans, Target, Costco, Superfresh, Peanut Chews, LibraryGarden, Libraries

Putting my head back into the OPAC

A couple of months ago I questioned whether the quality of our library OPACs figures greatly into the overall satisfaction of our customers. Something I read in the New York Times this weekend: made me reflect on that post and wonder whether I was asking the right question. This is the what got me a'ponderin':

Almost every Web film purveyor is planning to solve this bane of the modern culture consumer "too much choice" with some form of social networking. Recommendations, user reviews, friend lists and member pages are designed to help viewers determine which films they should watch.

When I read that, I found myself making these mental substitutions:

Almost every Web film purveyor library is planning to solve this bane of the modern culture consumer "too much choice" with some form of social networking. Recommendations, user reviews, friend lists and member pages are designed to help viewers library users determine which films they should watch books, cds and film they might enjoy next.

Now I'm wondering if the question I should be asking is, "how much value could we add to our customers' experience, how much more engaging could libraries be, if our OPACS were integrated with social software and offered reviews, friend lists, member pages and (not incidentally) filters and recommendations?"

Tags: OPAC, Library as Place, Customer Experience, libraries, social software, long tail, l20, library20

Get your head out of your OPAC

So stipulated: Library OPACS, uh, lack the functionality we desire. We're all agreed. OPACS should be much, much better.

Here's my question: How does the quality of the OPAC ultimately affect the total quality of customer experience and customer satisfaction? I think the answer to that question may be quite different from library to library, depending on the needs of our different user populations. Public library users may be more inclined to be browsers, and may not really care that much about how good the OPAC is. Academic, school and special library users may be more inclined to search for specific titles, or titles within specified subject areas, and may therefore care more about the quality of the OPAC.

But even in libraries where customers rely heavily on the OPAC, I'm not sure that the quality of the OPAC figures that greatly into the customers' overall satisfaction. (I suspect it often doesn't…) I worked in a small special library that had a truly awful, terrible OPAC. It was one of them home-grown government agency deals--ugh! But our small, dedicated staff gave great customer service, did a lot of outreach, offered a good deal of training, and our user satisfaction was quite high. While I'm sure our users really would have valued a better OPAC, their overall library experience was not greatly affected. If we instead had offered a really super-great OPAC, but lousy customer service, I don't think our users would have been quite so satisfied…

In Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey suggests that we are most effective when we focus our energy at those points where our concerns intersect with our ability to influence. Clearly the OPAC falls into our collective sphere of concern. But I'm not sure how much influence we have over the quality of the OPAC. I'm not suggesting that we don't try to influence the quality of the OPAC -- by working with vendors, creating our own systems, or a combination of both. I'm truly thankful that John Blyberg and Casey Bisson are out there. But I do think that for many libraries, or more perhaps I should say for many librarians, we may be able to get more bang for our limited buck, more return on the investment of our time and resources, by focusing our energies elsewhere.

I'd like to see libraries looking at their own spheres of concern and influence and making critical choices about where their time, energy, and resources can best be used to improve the quality of customer experience. In many cases, I suspect that we can have a much greater impact on customer experience by focusing on (in no particular order) the quality of the library's environment ("library-as-place"), the library's customer service, the library's webpage, the library's collection, the library's programs, the library's outreach, and the library's marketing (they can't experience us if they don't know about us.)

I'm particularly interested in how libraries can create better customer experiences and be more relevant to their user populations by improving their physical environments. How do our customers experience the actual library space including, the visual (displays, colors, lighting, layout), the tactile (comfy furniture) the olfactory (yum… coffee…), and the aural (zones of quiet, zones of noise, background music)? How does the library staff improve the quality of the environment? Are they warm, friendly, and hospitable? Are they visible? Are they proactive and helpful?

As Joshua Neff recently pointed out, I'm not the only one thinking about these things. Meredith Farkas, (in a must-read, smart, sensitive, insightful, and mostly-polite post) says that she doesn't use her library because she, "found the whole atmosphere really unwelcoming." Nicole Engard found that her local librarians "were not very approachable, knowledgeable, or friendly." Jennifer Macaulay , "admits" that she's not a library user either (and how many of us would "admit" the same?)

Now how many of you don't use your library because the OPAC sucks? Just wondering.

Technorati: OPAC, Library as Place, Customer Experience, libraries