My 2 Cents To Businesses Everywhere

Customer service seems to be on the minds of everyone lately.  First I posted about my recent not so great experiences, then today Strange Librarian posted on her blog her dealings with Weiss and being rushed out of the store, and then Andrew Shuping posted at FriendFeed his less than stellar experience with Cracker Barrel.  Something must be in the water.

You might wonder what do I know about customer service.  Well I served at the public service desk for many years as part of the Circulation department, I have contact with customers on weekly basis via email when dealing with technology problems, I have to interact with internal customers (staff and they are just as important as our external customers) daily solving their problems, answering their questions and helping them succeed in their roles but most importantly I AM A CONSUMER!

So whether you are a library, a retail establishment, small business or major corporation here is my 2 cents to you:

• Hire the appropriate staff.  Make sure your interview process asks probing, clarifying questions.  Don’t just give scenarios and ask how they’d handle them.
• Once appropriate staff are hired, TRAIN THEM.  Don’t assume because they answered questions correctly in the interview they know everything.  Technology comes along that they need to be aware of to interact correctly with customers.  Also refreshers are never a bad thing we can all benefit from that.
• Make sure your company policies are inline with good customer service.  Don’t tie your employees hands with silly policies or rules.
• Trust your employees.  You interviewed them, you hired them, you trained them now trust them.  That isn’t to say not to be aware of what they are doing but don’t micro-manage.  If you hover over them that kind of pressure won’t bring out the best customer service in them.
• Reward great customer service.  Let them know you value the kind of service they are providing.  Anything from an “attaboy” to comp time to monetary rewards – doesn’t have to be big but acknowledgment is always great to hear.
• Nip bad customer service in the bud.  One bad experience by a customer can multiply times ten and now with the social web it can multiply times ten thousand or more.  Pull that person off the front line, get them back into training, listen to them and help them learn a better way to handle the situation and if worst comes to worst fire them.  Keeping bad customer service employees in this day and age is tantamount to suicide.

I am as loyal as they come when you treat me right.  But all it takes is one wrong customer service experience for me to write about it, tell all my friends and more than likely never darken the doorstep of your establishment again.  Just ask Sears.  Had a bad experience with them back in 1989 and other than walking through their store to get inside the Columbia Mall I have never bought anything from them again.  You might think how much damage can one little person not buying anything from a major company like Sears do.  Well, it isn’t just me that isn’t buying it is my family and friends who have heard the full story – now with the social web that story can be told to many, many more.

Kicking and Screaming

Well thanks to strangelibrarian for tagging me on this my 2nd Meme (1st one was actually my first blog post). Interesting how a comment on FriendFeed takes on life of it’s own.

Funny I’ve told the story many times about how I got started here at Howard County Library but it wasn’t until this that I really thought about it. So here goes it….

I was born a poor black child….wait, that isn’t right.

It was a dark and stormy night……hmm, that doesn’t quite sound right either.

Like many of my fellow library workers, I suspect, my road to Librarydom started with a love of reading. As an only child it was often up to me to entertain myself and I often turned to books. I was definitely a fiction reader from early on but I also know I spent time scouring through our bicentennial editon of World Book encyclopedia. My folks also had a collection of medical encyclopedia’s put out by Reader’s Digest. The thought of that makes me laugh now. I know I often went to it as a teen who was too afraid to admit ignorance to my parents or peers and actually did find some good info in that collection. So basically everything from Dr. Seuss to World Book encyclopedia was devoured.

Then in middle school I had the opportunity to be a library aide. I can’t remember how I got asked to do that just remember shelving materials during lunch time.

Forward a bit to my 16th year and my Mother literally forcing me to apply for a page position (yes, we called them pages then – god knows what they are now they’ve been called many things over the years) at the Long Reach branch of the Howard County Library. I always tell this part as “she took me kickng and screaming…” which isn’t too far from the truth. Ironically my straight A student next door neighbor also applied for the job. Somehow my experience as a library aide in middle school must have given me an in because I got the job.

I was convinced that only the nerds, geeks, losers of high school worked at the *gasp* library. Back in that day there was actually more prestige associated with working at McDonald’s than at a library. However, my first day at work changed my opinion of libraries for good. The senior class clown was there working in my branch. How could someone that cool work at the library? Hmm, maybe this wasn’t such a bad place after all.

Forward about 7 years after I had left my page position at the library I find myself answering an ad for Circulation Technician. Wet behind the ears, I find myself dealing with the normal first job issues including having an elderly gentleman have a heart attack, fall to the floor and die on my desk shift. Ah, just another day in the life of a library.

A few years later I took a position as the Evening Supervisor. Basically was in charge of keeping the pages (then called something else forget just what) in line on nights and weekends. Some of the kids were really motivated and great workers. As usual the slackers were the ones that made my life hell. Not sure I was the best suited for that job and the hours soon wore on me. At the end of my stint doing that I found myself back in college and planning a wedding. Talk about stress.

Within 2 years I entered into a job share position and had to step down a level but it was worth it as I was a new mother and it afforded me time home with my son. Just before he entered kindergarten I went back full time. Within a few months I was able to move back up to my previous level as Senior Circulation Assistant.

During this time I had managed to learn quite a bit about our ILS system and was often the go-to girl for other staff. I had worked off and on in Interlibrary loan during the years so when a full time position in ILL became open, I went for it. It was perfect timing for me as in the 6 years I spent in ILL I learned 3 different ILL systems (AutoGraphics, Sails which went on to become Marina (URSA from SirsiDynix), and OCLC passport). As someone who loves variety, loves to learn, likes to just get in there and get her hands dirty and learn my years in ILL were filled with many new learning moments.

Then it looked like the face of ILL was going to change so I applied for a position in Automation. Luckily they wanted me for it (as I didn’t have ALL the requirements for the job) but my thorough knowledge of our then ILS system was in my favor. Again, the opportunity to learn more about our ILS system (classic Dynix) plus a whole new department gave me many years of learning enjoyment.

Then the migration to Horizon came which was MORE than a learning experience for me. But it opened a new opportunity – training. I had done a few training sessions on our email clients (Netscape, Thunderbird, Webmail) but now I got offer classes on how to use Windows and Horizon. I stumbled upon an area that I was good at and really enjoyed. Funny, when I first started my library path I never would have envisioned training being part of my future.

Shortly after our migration to Horizon, the Automation department joined with the rest of IT and I got a new boss. Again I found that my job gave me variety and plenty of opportunity for me to learn but to also help others learn. My new title reflected that – Coordinator of Software Support and Training. More classes were offered (RSS feeds, how to use our new Linux OS, Groovix, on our PACs, AquaBrowser) as well as written instructions and FAQs.

I was then given the awesome task of recreating our staff Intranet using Joomla! So again, I got to learn something new, get in and get my hands dirty (oh you are suppose to read manuals? Nah!) and loved every minute of it. I’ve now brought up 3 other sites on Joomla! and continue to learn about the product as well as good web practices. This opened another path for me – web design. Well not quite that good but it enabled me to work with our web programmer on our new website. If I was only half as cool or knew half as much as he does I’d be happy. But I learned so much and appreciated his patience with such a web neophyte.

Now as we migrate to Koha I have another opportunity to learn and train. I’ll be working with one of our librarians to help create the training modules used for our staff. We will first look at the work flow issues in each department and how they do it now. I’m looking forward to that as well as eventually working on YakPac.

My next new learning moment for me will come this fall when I branch out from training staff to our customers. I will be giving my first class for customers on Web 2.0 this fall. I designed a 5 part series with the help of other web 2.0 enthused staff – overview (my part), wikis, photo sharing, social networking, and audio streaming. I hope to bring my love of Web 2.0 to our customers and help them to understand and navigate the web a bit better.

The future holds, I hope, more opportunity to grow, learn and be able to give back to others the knowledge I’ve gained.

Okay, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Now it’s your turn – so I tag the following:

Theycallmetater (whom I work with)

Library Trainer (who I’ve not met in person but would love to hear her story)

Greg Schwartz (who I’ve not met in person but had interesting email exchange and love his show Uncontrolled Vocabulary)

almostBaldGeekinMd (who I’ve met in person and worked with virtually) who was also tagged by strangelibrarian (so maybe we can tag team him?)

Walking in My Shoes…

… But They Aren’t 4″ Heels*

I handle software. Coordinate, explore, test, support and train staff in regards to the software we use here at the Library. Over the past few years I’ve gotten away from working with hardware (when I first worked in IT I would troubleshoot anything computer related). Yesterday I readily agreed to swap out a dying PC for a newly imaged one. Simple – just swap cords, cables, rename computer, make sure the receipt printer works and I’m done, right? WRONG! Well everything went smoothly enough until I got to the part where I needed to plug in the barcode scanner. Ahh, nice new computer has strictly USB ports and scanner is too old so it’s not USB.

Okay, so go rob Peter to pay Paul – I took one of the USB scanners from the back. Perfect! Nice new computer on Customer Service desk now works beautifully. Now back to Peter so that he can work properly. Problem is Peter’s keyboard is USB and scanner has to plug in the old fashioned PS2 keyboard connector. Having the keyboard plugged in a USB port made the mouse and the scanner not work. After finding an old PS2 keyboard and after hunting through a bag of keys – keyboard had the letter N and the ?/ keys missing – I finally got Peter to work as well as Paul.

At one point I realized how much I like my job of sitting at my desk, playing with software, troubleshooting over the phone and not having to struggle with cables, cords, connectors and the like. I have a new found respect for the hardware folks on our IT team. Not that I didn’t think they worked hard before but I certainly don’t want to swap places with them anytime soon. The dust bunnies (allergies still bothering me today), the frustration of cords/cables not being long enough or the placement of the computer not being in the best spot, and figuring out how to make old and new hardware talk to each other is just part of what the hardware folks deal with. My hats off to them.

But it was a learning moment – I will hopefully remember what to do next time if this same problem occurs and I got to get out into a branch and interact with staff instead of via email or phone. So it wasn’t all bad even if my nose is still running from all the dust bunnies.

*Today’s title is take from Depeche Mode’s Walking in My Shoes

What’s in Your Book?

Catching up on my RSS feeds this morning, I came across this on the LISNews site. Ah, I remember my days in Circulation and being totally flabbergasted at what people would leave in a book (either as a bookmark or just left inside the front jacket). My favorite had to be $3K worth of bonds. I have never figured out the though process behind using something valuable as a bookmark. Guess we need to be thankful that they weren’t dog-earing the pages.

Equally interesting was the lost and found boxes. The stuff people left behind (not in books) was quite telling. Dentures, baby stroller, articles of clothing, you name it. I often wondered just what was going on to make a person leave behind something (other than the occasional pen, notebook type of thing). I mean don’t you know your full set of dentures are missing when you walk out of the building? Don’t you know that you walked in with a stroller so you need to walk out with one? What is even more interesting is most of these items were never claimed. We would hold onto them for months and months trying our best to contact folks if some sort of identification was on the item. One thing to misplace a bracelet and not know where you left it but your dentures?

Ah, one of the joys of working with the public – you get their junk treasures.

Edited 2:51 pm – Our Glenwood branch just put up an announcement on our Intranet that a red stroller was found in case the owner was looking for it.  What are the odds?

Librarian – definition please

I entered into an interesting conversation with Greg Schwartz because of a sentence in my “About” page. I describe myself as not being a librarian by some people’s definition. What I mean is that I don’t have a MLS. However, if we go by the definition from Merriam-Webster dictionary (a specialist in the care or management of a library) then some might consider what I’ve done for the last 25 years makes me a librarian.

One could argue that a piece of paper does not a librarian make. I don’t mean that a degree lacks value but maybe it should have a statue of limitations. Does a degree from 5, 10, 15 or even 20 years ago still have the same value today? Has our industry not grown and changed by leaps in bounds lately? How could something you learned 20 years ago in college even begin to apply to today’s library? Doesn’t real life experience on the job teach you so much more than any class room?

Keep in mind that I am a trainer. I love to teach. I love seeing someone have an “ah-ha!” moment. I am a life long learner myself. I firmly believe the day I stop learning from life, work, people, the universe is the day I die. I’m not trying to devalue any educator anywhere. I’m not saying that college or any kind of formal training doesn’t have it’s place but I’d just like to see real life experience get the same level of respect.

If real life experience of 25 years in customer service/circulation services, in Interlibrary Loan, in Automation and now with Information Technology counts for anything….maybe Greg is right, I am a Librarian.