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From the category archives:

customer service

Personal Accounts, Work Accounts – What To Do?

by David Lee King on March 10, 2010

Sometimes, I get these types of questions:

“I’m learning about social media tools, and a patron saw I was online and asked me a question … but I wasn’t at work! What should I do?”

“I was at work, and a friend saw I was online in Facebook and started asking me about the party last night. What should I do?”

    Here’s my take. I’d love for you to add to the discussion!

    First, for the patron/after-hours question. There are a few different ways to deal with this:

    • Answer the question. Really, this isn’t much different than getting stopped in the store and asked a question (yep – I think I have an “I’m a librarian! Ask me” sticker stuck to my forehead – don’t you?).
    • Alternatively, simply say “I’m off-duty. Email me the question, and I’ll answer it tomorrow.”

    How about the friend-contacting-you-at-work thing? For starters, I’d say chatting with a friend while at work is perfectly fine (as long as you’re getting your work done). You’re learning the tool with someone you trust. That’s a great way to gain new skills.

    What if that staff member is spending too much time in Facebook? Think about your work phone for a sec. In most jobs, it’s fine to get an occasional call from a friend. But if you’re spending 5 hours a day on the phone with that friend, then it’s a problem. And it’s not a problem with the phone – it’s a behavioral issue that the employer needs to deal with. Same thing with Facebook. Deal with the problem (spending too much time talking to friends while at work) – not the symptom (phone/Facebook).

    While I’m on the topic, a related question that I’m also asked is this: “Should I set up separate work and personal accounts in social networks, or set up one for everything?”

    I’m not convinced the question is completely warranted anymore. Some social networks have made this issue pretty easy to figure out without worrying too much about personal/work-related stuff. For example, Facebook has two types of accounts – personal profiles nad organizational Pages. If you set up an organizational library Page, and you set up a personal profile that’s you, the two don’t really cross over.

    There is one kinda tricky part to Facebook Pages. To set up a Facebook Page, you use your personal profile. That organizational Page is connected to, or owned by, whoever originally sets up the Page. This is important to think through! Do you create a “library david” profile, then create the Page (which sorta goes against Facebook’s policy – one profile per person)? Or do you use your real personal profile to set up the page? I know more than one librarian who has gotten another job, moved out of state … and still technically “owns” the Facebook Page from the old job. That can get weird fast!

    There’s also one slightly tricky part with Twitter, too. My library has a library Twitter account. And I have my personal Twitter account. Easy enough. I also do a lot of “listening” via Twitter searches for my library. So, when someone asks a question or says something about the library – even if they don’t use the proper @topekalibrary to do it – I see that comment. I usually reply to them using my @davidleeking account. What do you think – is that ok, or should I use the @topekalibrary account? Not sure.

    S0 – what do you do? Do you find it easy or hard to separate your work life from your personal life online? Let me know – and share what you do!

    photo by anomalily

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    Humanizing your Facebook Pages

    by David Lee King on February 9, 2010

    A “Book and Digital Media Studies” student (wow – what a cool-sounding program!) emailed me last week, asking about my favorite university library Facebook Pages. Well … to be honest, I can’t say I frequent university library Facebook Pages much.

    But I followed up a bit, and did a search in Facebook for university library then narrowed the search to Pages, and found over 500 university libraries with Facebook Pages.

    As I browsed through the list, I started noticing that some Pages had low friend counts in the 0-30 range, and many were in the 70-200 range. And there were a handful that had thousands of friends:

    Why do these Pages have more friends? Glancing through them, it looks like they are doing one thing – they are humanizing their Facebook Pages. What do I mean by that?

    They’re “doing stuff.” Stuff like this:

    • Posting regular status updates
    • Interacting with visitors in the comments of status updates – some status updates have 20-30 comments, as well as “Likes”
    • Pointing to stuff that’s happening in the library (ie., lectures)
    • Regularly add photos and videos – sometimes hundreds of them.
    • They use Facebook’s Events feature to list events.

    How about libraries with a low fan count? Here’s one example – the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Main Library, with 7 fans. What are they doing? Nothing. They have 1 status update, from August 2009. Their most recent activity was adding the library’s website url, mailing address, and phone number.

    So, to answer the question “Do students friend university library Facebook Pages?” (I hear that one a lot) the answer would be yes – IF those pages are being humanized. Looks like the pages with high fan counts have constant activity streams. Pretty much every day or so, something is happening on those Pages – there are regular status update posts, photos or videos are being added, and event reminders are being posted.

    Basically, activity attracts Facebook users. Think of your Facebook Page like a party. Anyone ever attended a dead party? If there’s nothing going on, the party goers quickly find an excuse to leave, because the party is boring, right? In the same way, if your Facebook Page has no updates … your party is boring, and you are inviting your students to go do something else.

    This is easily fixable if you do one simple thing. Post an update every day, and make it interesting. Examples from the Fan-heavy pages above include helping students out – pointing to a book/resource that has the “answers” for an assignment, just sharing an interesting tidbit of university or library news, sharing quotes, etc. Pretty normal stuff – just shared with Facebook users.

    But if you’re not human, if nothing’s going on … no one will show up to your party.

    Bunny by Alyssa Miller

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    Showing Patrons the Door

    by David Lee King on February 3, 2010

    First, a funny story. When I lived in Nashville, I frequented a cool used record store. During one trip, I was trying to decide whether or not to buy a couple of old jazz cassette tapes (hey – I was on a tight budget).

    The tiny shelf these cassette tapes were on was packed WAY too tightly, so when I tried to pull one cassette out to examine it, 2-3 others would fall out at the same time. And make lots of noise as they hit the floor (it was tile, of course). This happened a couple of times … in a row … and was pretty embarrassing!

    So – to ease my embarrassment at not being able to figure out how to successfully pull a cassette tape off the shelf, a “helpful” shop security guard came over to me. He stood behind me, stared at me for a second, and said (and I quote) – “you’ve got 10 minutes, then you’d better be out of my store.” Then he walked away.

    Boy, that helped. Thanks :-) That day, the store essentially “showed me the door” in no uncertain terms. Even though the problem wasn’t me – it was their tightly-packed shelf.

    Now on to the title of this post, and to my point. Showing patrons the door? Yikes – we’d never do that (under normal circumstances, anyway)! Unlike the silly used record shop, librarians would never consciously walk up to a patron and tell them to leave if that patron was having trouble using something in the library … right?

    I think we DO sometimes tell our patrons to leave when we make things difficult for them. We might as well be saying “here’s the door, don’t let it hit you on the way out.”

    For example, if your library has a blog, do you moderate those comments? Quickly? I know of libraries that can go 1-2 weeks before they get around to moderating comments. In and of itself, moderating a comment is fine, as long as they are moderated fast (like within 1-4 hours). Blog posts are supposed to be the start of a conversation; comments continue that conversation. If those comments aren’t approved at least in the same day, you have essentially killed that conversation. To me, that sounds like showing patrons the door.

    Is your website confusing? Do customers have to puzzle out what they need to do next while on your site? If so … your website is showing patrons the door. Same with our catalogs – a confusing catalog might just steer customers away from checking stuff out – and that’s one of our major, must-have services!

    Do you let patrons sign up for a library card online (some libraries don’t)? How about having an online sign-up form that asks for WAY too much info? That’s a sure-fire way to show patrons the door.

    What labels and naming schemes do you use on your site? Using heavy-duty librarian jargon might just be a great way to usher patrons towards the door.

    How about not having a Facebook Page (or even blocking Facebook altogether)? Or simply doubting that your patrons use Facebook (without actually signing up for a Facebook account and checking)? Yet another way to show a group of very active, involved patrons the door.

    Other ways to show patrons the door might include hard to find stuff on your website, hidden content, or even library services that aren’t mentioned anywhere on your website.

    So – what do you think? What else shows patrons the door, and how can we fix that?

    Pic by Cayusa

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    { 11 comments }

    Stickers or Cushions?

    by David Lee King on December 13, 2009

    No seat or unintended consequences?Take a look at this pic – it’s at the Chicago O’Hare International Airport Denver airport. I really don’t know the why’s behind this sticker, but I can guess. And I’d guess it goes something like this:

    When the moving walkway was installed, they made these little metal ledges. Maybe the ledge houses a belt, or gears … maybe it’s just for looks. Who knows?

    Either way, as the airport got busier, and delays started happening more often, customers looked around for a seat and couldn’t find one. Then they eyed that handy, seat-sized ledge … and sat.

    When airport staff noticed that lots of people needed seats, and were using those handy little seat-sized ledges, what did they do? Did they install more seats? An overflow room? Restaurants with more seating? Nope. They chose to put a big fat sticker on the seat-sized ledge that reads “no seat.”

    So – a question. Who do you think airport administrators were thinking of when they created that sticker and stuck it to the makeshift overflow seating area? Were they thinking of their customers, who didn’t have a place to sit? Or were they thinking of their staff? I’d guess the airport’s decision had more to do with themselves than with their paying customers with tired legs.

    Moral of the story? Always put your customers first. In the airport’s case – instead of a “no seat” sticker, how about putting out cushions? Work hard to always improve your customers’ experience while using your services, even with the seemingly innocuous things (like little seat-sized metal ledges).

    Your customers will remember it and you will be a hero.

    Update – Chuck Cannon, Director of Public Affairs at Denver International Airport pointed out that I had the wrong airport. Sorry! Just updated the post.

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    Dealing with Comments on your Website

    by David Lee King on August 7, 2009

    First, a bit of backstory: my library is going to start charging late fees. Wow – exciting, David! Most libraries do that! Yeah, yeah – I know. But we haven’t had a late fee for 35 years or so, so it’s a bit of a big deal in Topeka right now. We’re starting to share our plan with our community, and one obvious place to share has been on our library’s website.

    Guess what? People have been sharing back. Quite a few (check the comments! It’s interesting reading). That one post, so far, has gathered a whopping 89 comments (a first for us). Comments by 36 people, mostly from customers (there’s about 7 library staff who have chimed in, including me). One customer has posted 14 comments! It’s been a rather hot blog post for us.

    Here’s how we’ve been handling our comments:

    • Normally, the blog author (ie., library staff) get an email when there’s a comment on their post, and they respond to the comment – thank the person for commenting, answer questions, etc.
    • Once in awhile (as in this particular blog post), the questions are passed off to appropriate staff to answer (if you look through the comments to the post in question, you’ll see that happening).
    • I actively monitor comments (that’s part of my job)
    • When there’s a misperception or misinformation being shared, we correct it
    • If there’s a personal attack (which has happened twice so far), I step it and email the person individually, telling them that they’re welcome to post, please stick to the topic, and stop attacking others…  then I also post a comment on that blog post stating what I did and why. We’re going for transparency.
    • If there’s a comment that’s highly inappropriate, I delete it (there’s been one so far).
    • And we delete spam comments.

    Otherwise, we let it go – after all, we created an open forum, and people can say whatever they want (for the most part). I am also working on some online Community Discussion Guidelines. We’ll probably put a link to them somewhere around our blog comment box. It’s been an interesting lesson in online forum management for me!

    Why are we putting ourselves through this? Why don’t we just close comments and move on? Because we are in control of the conversation. Think about it. If people were talking about this issue on their own blogs, the library might or might not be able to respond. If people were discussing this on the newspapers editorials/comments (which they have been), we’re not in control of that conversation either – the newspaper is.

    But when the conversation happens on our website … then we’re in control. We can correct misinformation easily, and point to the correct answer. We can add phone numbers, email addresses, etc. We can even email the commenter individually (assuming they used a valid email address).

    This allows  us to hold the conversation in “our building” – on our digital branch. One of my co-workers recently said she was putting on her fireman’s hat when we started getting negative comments. I reminded her that she was right – but we were doing a “controlled burn.” Because we’re in control of the conversation.

    Have you had similar experiences with your organization’s blog and/or website? If so, how have you handled:

    1. lots of comments?
    2. inappropriate comments?

    I’d love to know!

    Pic by Vetustense

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    Revitalizing the Library Experience – ALA2009

    by David Lee King on July 12, 2009

    Speakers – Joan Frye Williams and George Needham

    georgeandjoan.com

    The Classic Objections:
    - it will never work
    - we tried that…
    - our patrons etc won’t like it ..
    - etc

    Stop thinking of the Library Experience as the library experience. When we talk about that, we usually focus on what we do.

    They’ve visited lots of libraries, and found out there’s not often a true customer focus.

    We need to think more about what the user does, and who they are!

    Joan mentioned TSCPL! They love our mission statement – “you know us, and we know you.” (cool – I wrote that part :-)

    Being held back by confidentiality – we often go for ignorance & call it privacy and confidentiality

    The independent user is invisible to us.

    Re-imagine the user experience!!! Yes. The experience belongs to the user.

    If we imagine the user as our audience, we get mad when they don’t applaud us. Interesting thought…

    Patrons should start feeling successful right when they walk into the library – just like when they use google (ie., there’s no user manual for google)

    situational signage

    Shouldn’t have to use our jargon just to get started (hmm… databases fails here…)

    Environments that learn from and adapt to the user is the right way to go

    New ways to experience library service – layered services. A way to unfold what the library offers

    Time: layer services depending on how much time the patron has
    Ex – quick start guide vs complete manuals
    So – set up libraries for both the “I have no time” patron tot he “I can spend a day here” patron

    Place: layer services by place.
    - the users aren’t remote – the services are.
    - the library experience takes place outside the library.
    - all social networking, web, etc certainly does. iPhone apps, Facebook are examples
    - Showing barcodes on signs – scan it with phone, get local info – b-tags.
    - me – could you set up a b-tag for a “fact of the day” and put it in a park/mall/on the street/in a school? Hmm…

    Make sure it’s always about them, never about us

    First Impressions:
    - how does your place look on a first impression?
    - how many of you use the same doors/bathrooms as the patron?

    Get out from behind the desk

    Org chart/service points – circ desk, ref desk, etc. For the patron, it’s all part of the same story.

    First point of contact – driving around building, walking into the library, etc. Who does the intercept? Usually the shelver.
    - deploy staff around the library, standing up – you will increase the number of interactions
    - make this intercept so that everyone, building, etc can make that intercept universal

    Triage – figuring out some choice to make.
    - we act as if we are the arbiters of triage (ie., the reference interview). Instead, most people do this themselves. You watch the other people instead of talking to staff. It HAS to be self-service.

    I have a stupid question… translation – your library, setup, etc  just made someone feel stupid. Not a good thing.

    Outcomes: When a patron needs to use a computer to do a job search, the goal isn’t to find a guide or do a job search … it’s to find a job.

    Patrons are looking for staff that want to enter into their success…
    - gave an example of an academic library – student said here’s what you do – find a librarian you can work with, who seems to care, and they will help you ace any class. Didn’t say they will help you find a book… They are looking for success, and we need to set up our libraries that way.

    Main goal – get people to come back – it’s all about relationships… not stuff.

    Revitalize your point of view.

    “Libraries are at a crossroads” – actually, everyone’s at a crossroads. Successful libraries help guide people through their crossroads. There are a lot of common ones – ie., birth, marriage, divorce, retirement, getting a job, etc.

    Wane Gretsky – “I don’t skate to the puck, I state to where the puck is going to be.” Libraries can do this, too – we know some common transformations/crossroads – so how can we be there at those crossroads for them?

    Communication of meaning – that’s the business we’re in. Google can’t do this. We should be building this across the community. It’s not transactional, it’s not about the stuff. The setup of transformation is a heck of a job to be in.

    Staff is also at a crossroads:
    - start treating people like they’re smart and independent.
    - presumption of innocence – don’t defend against potential disaster.
    - the reference desk – feels like the seat of shame.
    - respect and remember their preferences.
    - look for ways to say yes.

    Give respect and get respect – you have to treat every connection as if it has a transformative potential.

    The library experience has that long, transformative view. It’s not about the transaction.

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    { 1 comment }

    Steps to Mapping a Customer’s Journey

    by David Lee King on June 29, 2009

    Designing the Digital ExperienceAwhile back, I sent Valeria Maltoni (who writes the cool Conversation Agent blog) a copy of my bookDesigning the Digital Experience.

    She’s been reading it, and blogged about it (very awesome – thanks, Valeria)! And in the process, she has some really good pointers about mapping the customer journey (which I wrote about in Chapter 11). She came up with some steps to mapping a customer’s journey:

    1. Connect the dots between internal preparedness and external needs – overcoming internal processes and barriers that block you from giving your customer a better “journey”
    2. Integrate what you say with what you do – “How are all of the messages you’re sending out in each medium integrating with the feedback you receive in that medium, for example? What are you learning and feeding back into the process?”
    3. Innovate at each touch point – “What process or tool have you not updated for a long time and needs revisiting, for example?”

    … and each point discusses the “moment of truth” found in each of those steps.

    Go read the whole post – good stuff there!

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    Extreme Customer Service at Darien Library

    by David Lee King on May 11, 2009

    I recently visited Darien Library with the goal of checking out their innovative approach to technology – goal achieved! Check out the video in this post (and thanks to John Blyberg for the tour and for putting up with my video camera!). While their technology is amazingly cool, that’s not really what excited me. What excited me most was Darien’s idea of extreme customer service.

    During my Darien visit, I had the privilege of chatting with Louise Berry, Alan Gray, and John Blyberg over lunch (great lunch, great conversation – thanks guys!). We talked about technology, new library buildings, and how we should be serving our library customers. Louise and Alan told me about their library’s core message – extreme customer service. Basically, they want to demonstrate extreme customer service in everything they do.

    This idea of a “core message” is discussed in the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath. Most of the book is devoted to making your core message “stick” – this is what Darien Library has done.

    They even provided examples. During lunch, Louise, Alan and John mentioned an after-hours wine and cheese event they held at the library. The library was closed, but doors were open. Patrons not attending the event came in anyway … and guess what? They weren’t turned away – instead, they were allowed to check out books (RFID-based self-check-out machines help). Staff were even seen setting up new library cards for patrons. This is very different from what many libraries do. For most after-hours events, patrons would simply be told (nicely, I’m sure) to come back tomorrow.

    So – one example of extreme customer service at Darien. You can find another example in the video. Watch for the mini laptops in the children’s area of the library. Those are staff public service laptops used for roaming reference type stuff. But listen to the children’s staff talk about them – kids pick those laptops up and use them. Patrons even use the public service desktop … and Darien’s staff is fine with that! When I asked about this, here’s what I heard: “why would we NOT allow that?”

    John said the same thing later on in my tour (not captured on video). We were in a staff area, and I noticed someone had brought in her personal laptop. I asked what she could connect to … and John said staff can bring in their personal laptops and connect to Darien’s staff-only network. I pried a bit further, and this is when John said “why would we NOT allow that? It would simply hinder their work!” Then John went on to explain that they plan for the exceptions and fix those things, rather than lock down technology so much that it hinders the work of the library. Extreme customer service for their staff, too!

    Does your library have a core message, and how does that play out? And … does your library lock technology down so much so that it hinders the work of the library? What would happen if you opened that can of worms up? Would any escape? Something to think about…

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    { 9 comments }