Extreme Customer Service: Becoming a customer activist

Originally posted at Julie's strangelibrarian blog; reposted at BCPL Staff Out and About blog. You can also listen to a recording of Julie speaking about this session at BCPL's Administrative Council.
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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!”

Think 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
• Need to be genuine

Environmentalist plus CIA = Customer Activist