News & Views, July 2010 (mp3 file; 6.8 MB; 7:15 min.)Return to Customer Service; "Slow Reading"
You probably have noticed, as have I, that there are some weeks when you have many experiences of both very good and very bad customer service. I--and the rest of my family--had just such a week when we traveled from various places around to the country to celebrate Dad’s 90th birthday. I won’t go into all the details of all the experiences--there were some humdingers--but I found that I learned a lot from both kinds of experiences. Because I’m very interested in customer service (and recognize that I always need work on myself to improve it) I pay close attention to it, both good and bad. I observe 3 things: what service situation or occasion caused the experience (either good or bad), how did the service provider respond to the customer’s experience and reaction, and how did the customer--and “innocent bystanders”-- react to that response (because customer service seldom occurs in a vacuum!)
it’s usually pretty easy to find an analogous situation or cause in a library. If the experience was not good, what might the provider have done to prevent the bad experience in the first place? Are there similar kinds of things in my library that are unclear, or unfair, or annoying, or stupid--and what might I do to change that before any bad experiences arise? If the experience was good, again, what are some of those same kinds of things that I might apply in my library to create good experiences from the beginning.
How the provider responds to a customer’s experience is key, of course, and is the focus of much of the customer service training we see. There’s no need to try to recreate all of that here, but I have learned so much from just watching responses and thinking about how I would have responded, how the provider might have responded better (unless it was really good--and I have plenty of instances of amazingly good responses), and learning from the experience, tucking away phrases or approaches or attitude that made the situation better. (Conversely, if it’s a bad response you can tuck away notes to self to NOT do that.) How did you *feel” when the provider responded. Everyone wants to feel important and heard; I try to listen and watch for what brings that to people in those situations. For example, during our trip we heard everything from “Sorry. Good luck with that” sort of response from a car rental company to a perfectly splended 3 hour display of courtesy, calm and caring during a 3 hour, well, siege is about the only way I can describe it, by an airline agent trying to manage a mess of flight delays and cancellations.
During that week I was particularly attuned to how the people around the customer service activities responded to what was happening to someone else. We are pretty good at recognizing the importance of the customer service with the person directly involved but, particularly in a public place such as a library, much of customer service is done with an audience. And that audience is paying attention, so what we do is every bit as telling to the bystanders as it is to the person directly involved. I watched people trying to get flights changed calm down as the agent dealt with each calmly, kept everyone informed, and worked with a smile. I heard the auto club service responder become incensed along with me when I explained why we were calling them instead of the car rental agency--and you can bet that that person won’t be renting from that agency in her lifetime. I intervened on behalf of a stranger when I was standing in line in a store, when the response to an issue was not at all acceptable (and I knew not in keeping with that company’s customer service policy).
Now this is not to say, by any stretch of the imagination, that I’m the greatest customer service person around--quite the opposite, in fact. All of these experiences that I observe, or am a part of, are constant reminders to me of the importance of customer service, and learning experiences as I watch masters of customer service, and tuck away those things I learn to help me get better. Real life experiences and observations are good teachers--I have little mini-workshops around me all the time!
I know you all are much better at customer service than I, and observe it around you all day. What can you share about providing excellent customer service? What really excellent customer service experience have you observed recently?
References in Today's Podcast:
- "The case for slow reading," by Thomas Newkirk. Education Leadership, March 2010.
- "Reading in a whole new way" by Kevin Kelly. Smithsonian, August 2010.
Online: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsections/40th-anniversary/Reading-in-a-Whole-New-Way.html
