The Best Service Is No Service

Editor's Notes

1. I came across this on Pinterest. It’s fun, but I eventually decided that it misses the mark.Exercise (leave statement on the page): what are some of the issues in thinking of circ and reference as the public library system?There are more departments besides Circ and Reference: Cataloging, IT, Children’s Reference librarians don’t find most of the items. Self-service is a big part of the library system. The legal system, or at least “Law & Order,” deals with exceptions (offences and offenders), not our everyday lives. So does Reference. But Circ people are part of our everyday library experience.
2. There are more departments besides Circ and Reference: Cataloging, IT, Children’s Reference librarians don’t find most of the items. Self-service is a big part of the library system. The legal system, or at least “Law & Order,” deals with exceptions (offences and offenders), not our everyday lives. So does Reference. But Circ people are part of our everyday library experience.
3. Iowa (in millions)Circ 29.4Visits 19.7Contacts 1.7Burlington (in thousands)Circ 526 (36% self-checkout)Visits 258Contacts 21Most of the work that gets done in the Public Library System is done by Readers.
4. Before showing this slide, ask participants to estimate what percentage of their reader’s assistance/reference transactions are by phone or digital (email, web, etc.)Wikimedia commons: File:Iceberg.jpgcom/iceberg/ | Date 2005-07-03 | Author Created by UweKils (iceberg) and User:WiskaBodo (sky). | Permission | other_versions ...(573 × 833 (87 KB)) - 09:02, 24 August 2011
5. How we traditionally are told about customer service.What we may want to throw under the busAnother Pinterest find:Not your grandmother’s customer service workshopBell System 1940s telephone etiquette booklet
6. What we remember is our experience with readers who interact with us, not those who don’t.We worry to much about our own “presentation skills” in interacting with the reader, rather than thinking of ourselves as invisible interfaces.
7. Frances Frei and Anne Morriss Emphasize that staff aren’t the problem Design systems so that heroes aren’t required – great customer service can be provided as a matter of course Difficult to find and pay staff who have both technical and people skills
8. Catch phrase from Garrison Keillor’s monologues.Lake Wobegon effect: Lake Wobegon is a fictional Minnesota town, the subject of humorist Garrison Keillor’s weekly radio monologue News from Lake Wobegon. From Wikipedia: “Lake Wobegon is characterized as the town where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." The Lake Wobegon effect, a natural human tendency to overestimate one's capabilities, is named after the town.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon)
9. μ = Mu = Meanσ = Sigma = standard deviationSix sigma = ± six standard deviations from the mean within limitsNormal distribution: “A normal distribution is a very important statistical data distribution pattern occurring in many natural phenomena, such as height, blood pressure, lengths of objects produced by machines, etc. Certain data, when graphed as a histogram (data on the horizontal axis, amount of data on the vertical axis), creates a bell-shaped curve known as a normal curve, or normal distribution. Normal distributions are symmetrical with a single central peak at the mean (average) of the data [Mu, µ]. The shape of the curve is described as bell-shaped with the graph falling off evenly on either side of the mean. Fifty percent of the distribution lies to the left of the mean and fifty percent lies to the right of the mean. The spread of a normal distribution is controlled by the standard deviation [Sigma, σ]. The smaller the standard deviation, the more concentrated the data.” (Oswego City School District Regents Exam Prep Center, http://www.regentsprep.org/Regents/math/algtrig/ATS2/NormalLesson.htm)
10. So what do we do to provide uncommon service?
11. Weaver, Creating Great Visitor Experiences
12. Positive! Not negativeExample: Getting a call about Jerrie’s lost phone
13. Quote: From Awareness to Funding
14. Published online February 14, 2012Percentage of respondents listing each subject among top five circulatorshttp://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/02/library-services/book-buying-survey-2012-book-circ-takes-a-hit/SURVEYMETHODThe survey and invite for LJ’s 2012 budget and circulation study was distributed to a representative sample of 1,850 U.S. public library directors on October 27, 2011. The survey was hosted and completed online. The field closed on December 1, 2011 with 388 libraries responding. Tabulation was conducted in-house by Library Journal Research.The data was weighted by population served to even out fluctuations in respondent sample sizes and better reflect the public library universe. Weighted averages are used for total sample results only. Data appearing for specific population groups remains unweighted.
15. Crowdsourcing a cemetery index
16. Frances Frei and Anne Morriss Emphasize that staff aren’t the problem Design systems so that heroes aren’t required – great customer service can be provided as a matter of course Difficult to find and pay staff who have both technical and people skills
17. Be on constant lookout for duck soup.
18. One: Random fluctuation in the quantum multiverse
19. Plan – Do – Check – Act
20. Big business oriented – customer service as a separate department, but still has many insightsDumb contacts:
21. Consider the checkout slip – physical evidence
22. We need to stay out of the way of the conversation the reader is having with the implied librarian.
23. Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching