Customer Service

Customer Service In Academic Libraries

Service • Definitions • Purpose • Planning, Policy, and Process • Evaluation and Outcomes

Customer Service “To deliver effective and high quality services, libraries have to assess their performance from the customer point of view” “At a time of fiscal retrenchment, meeting changing customer expectations becomes very challenging” Lakos & Phipps (2004), 345.

Definitions • What is “customer service”? • What entails good (or bad) customer service? Identify one positive and one negative customer service experience you’ve had.

What are our “services” • To which aspects of the library could we apply customer service? • How would it work in each of these areas?

Customer Expectations • Service Quality: • Viewed as the interaction between users and the library • User expectations measured against user experience • Satisfaction • “happiness” with service

Whom Do We Serve? • Patrons • Users • Customers • Guests • What difference what we call them?

Why? • Why focus on customer service? • What is the purpose of our focus?

Planning, Policies, & Process • What goes into implementing a customer service policy? • What do we base our policy on? • Is the customer always right? To what extent can library customers determine expectations and quality? • To what extent can a “customer service model accomplish the goal of meeting user needs without creating a set of conceptual and practical problems” (Budd, 1997, p. 310)

Planning • Review mission, values, goals • Set goals/ outcomes specifically for customer service • Define your customer base, segment markets • Define your approach (i.e. customer, patron, or guest; commodities, services, or experiences)

Policies • Guidelines for behaviors, transactions, and processes • Delimits parameters • Requires training • http://www.ncl.ac.uk/library/about/care.php

Assessing & Evaluating Customer Service

Service Quality (Gaps Model) • Gap 1: Customer expectations of service andmanagement’s perspective on these expectations • Gap 2: Service quality specifications and management’s perspective of customer expectations • Gap 3: Service quality expectations and service delivery • Gap 4: Service delivery and external communication to customers about that delivery • Gap 5: Customers expectations of service AND perceived service delivery

Expectations • Subjective • Comprise desired wants, or the extent to which customers believe a particular service attribute is essential for an excellent service provider • Expectations change over time • Perceptions are judgments about service performance

How to Measure Service Quality • Self-reporting (SERVQUAL, LibQUAL+, and Hernon/Nitecki) • How go beyond self-reports…

Satisfaction • Emotional • Influenced by overall experience and “experience of the moment” • How measure? • For instance, satisfaction with library’s home page?

Resistance… To Service Quality

Reasons for Resistance to Service Quality • Teaching faculty and librarians may not regard users as customers, dismissing the value of knowing such information (may not translate the data into service improvement) • Customer service and idea of users as customers may be seen as a shift away from “core values” of profession. Service may not be a high priority • Librarians may perceive themselves as educators not service providers, or more as educators than service providers

Staff might resist the adoption of a program or attitude of quality improvement because they think that a focus on improvement implies an initial baseline of inferior or substandard service.. Or, they may believe that they already provide high quality service and that an emphasis on assessment detracts from completing their regular tasks, duties, and routines

There might be a perception that service quality only applies to public service, not the entire organization • In a climate of organizational downsizing and restructuring, libraries may increase staff workload and responsibilities, and decrease the importance of service or at least the time to which staff feel they can devote to service. • There may be a concern that improved service adds to the workload—staff fear success adds a burden

Library administration may not favor customer focused service. They might now empower staff to help users • If the staff feel they already know what customers want, need, and expect, there may be reluctance to set outcomes and engage in benchmarking—dismissing customers and their expectations

Staff may believe that customer service applies only to private section and businesses • Library staff may think that customers lack the expertise and judgment about what resources or information are good for them • There may be a belief that libraries do not face competition or that libraries need not be concerned about competition • Some staff believe service is not crucial to the library’s survival

Some resistance might be inferred from two questions: • If libraries develop a service will customers come in sufficient numbers to justify the continuance of that service? • If they do not come (or if they seldom do), do librarians really care?

Libraries may prefer to gather outputs showing how busy they are and seek to use the data for request additional resources • Catering to customer expectations makes staff appear less professional • Thus, how customer focused are we really?

Libraries can tell you what they purchased for their first “one millionth” holding, but they cannot tell you about their millionth customer and how they honored that person. • Is this important?

Wright State pledge Adapt it for a particular setting

Some Relevant Readings • Assessing Service Quality (ALA, 1998) • Budd, J. M. (1997). A critique of customer and commodity. College & Research Libraries, 58(4), 310. • Delivering Satisfaction and Service Quality (ALA, 2000) • An ActionPlan for Outcomes Assessment in Your Library (ALA, 2002) • The Journal of Academic Librarianship (Jan.-Mar. 2002) • “Measuring Service Quality” Library Trends, 59 (4) (Spring 2001): entire issue

Customer Service