Comments on: Be Nice to Customers – Even Online

By: Librarian by Day » How Social Media can hurt your library

Librarian by Day » How Social Media can hurt your library — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:39:07 +0000

[...] Be nice to Customers – even online [...]

By: Emily

Emily — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:06:35 +0000

Sarah makes some great points.

Customer Service can be very rewarding but it can also be extremely stressful, soul-killing work. All too frequently policies fail to address this in a constructive, helpful manner. The farther a library manager gets from a position which deals with the unfiltered public, the easier it is to forget that the staff need support in their work.

By: Carolyn Wood

Carolyn Wood — Sat, 09 May 2009 03:00:21 +0000

“I’ve had an offer out for 25 years that, if anyone has a problem with my public service skills, they can do my job for a week and I can watch and take notes on how a REAL professional does it.”

Sarah – This comment in particular signals a need for change.

BTW – 95% of my work week is spent on a service desk.

By: Explore » Blog Archive » Twitter & Customer Service

Explore » Blog Archive » Twitter & Customer Service — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:47:55 +0000

[...] Lee King recently wrote a post titled Be Nice to Customers – Even Online. He discovered some tweets of librarians that were not very customer friendly. (Check out his [...]

By: Privat, personligt, professionellt på sociala webben « BiblioBuster

Privat, personligt, professionellt på sociala webben « BiblioBuster — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:49:20 +0000

[...] Jag läser David Lee King, som skriver om hur bibliotekspersonal Twittrar om jobbiga låntagare, Be nice to customers – even online. Här känns det ju verkligen som om de flesta gränser överskrids med marginal. Detta är inte [...]

By: Sarah

Sarah — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:08:30 +0000

The actual underlying problem here, the big elephant in the profession is that public service is becoming increasingly more stressful and the divide between those who do it on a regular basis and those who don’t is becoming increasingly wider (just like the wage gap). The profession isn’t dealing with it but instead issues statements, documents, and all sorts of meaningless stuff castigating those who supposedly can’t deal with “change”. People will talk, and vent, period. If they don’t have any constructive help in dealing with the stress, and if there isn’t respectful two-way communication, and if they are crapped on for their public service skills by those who don’t want to realize that there are also INTERNAL customers to be served, then this will just continue. Most people don’t get pats on the back for being “so 2.0″ when they are doing their job, over and over again. How about making sure that public service people have the resources they need to do their jobs – after all, they are customers of library management. Would they take their business elsewhere if they could? So instead of getting all snotty about “negative energy” and customer service, how about cross-training yourselves to ensure that public service people can get off desk and take vacations? How about designing jobs which are 50/50? I’ve had an offer out for 25 years that, if anyone has a problem with my public service skills, they can do my job for a week and I can watch and take notes on how a REAL professional does it. Nobody has yet taken me up on my offer.

By: Accidental Librarian

Accidental Librarian — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:52:47 +0000

Isn’t there an underlying problem here? If a librarian thinks of library customers in this way, he or she is probably in the wrong line of work. I agree with Carolyn – just imagine if all that negative energy and Twitter time was used to influence change, work on improving our attitude – including valuing customers? Just a thought.

By: davidleeking

davidleeking — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:42:08 +0000

Stefanie – look through the comments on my blog posts. Most people would find that I welcome disagreements.

The screenshots above are all publicly-accessible stuff. I found about 10 of them, then went with the juiciest 3 – making sure to remove links and account names, and making sure full names weren’t connected to any of them.

That individual’s quotes were, unfortunately, the “cream of the crop.” Yes, noticed because of a disagreement – but revenge? Nope.

But you’re welcome to disagree.

By: ruth

ruth — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:19:27 +0000

those tweets are just three of the hazards of “look at me! look at me!” technology. so caught up in being seen but little thought about what we say. and sometimes, how and when we we say it.

By: Stefanie

Stefanie — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:25:00 +0000

I saw the other “conversation” which had nothing to do with this topic, and that isn’t why the other person blew you off. Nothing like misleading information, David. Let this be a warning to anyone who has the temerity to disagree with this guy. Sheesh. It looks like the person did take that part of it seriously but wasn’t interested in continuing the rest of the conversation. They have the right to disagree with you, but you seem to be using this posting as revenge, and that’s not cool.