PLA Conference Session Highlights Customer-Focused Changes
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Created to show staff what I attended and learned at the PLA conference in March of 2006 in Boston, MA
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PLA Conference Session Highlights Customer-Focused Changes
- 1. Public Library Association (PLA) Conference Information Session for Staff April 28, 2006
Notas del editor
- We each received an LSTA Career Enrichment grant from the State Library of North Carolina. LSTA grants are federal money that is funneled through state libraries to local libraries. More information can be found at the State Library’s web site.
- I’d like to give you a brief overview of the conference and then talk about the concept of customer driven libraries.
- Table talks are smaller group sessions where participants discuss relevant topics. Conference programs are more formal presentations with larger audiences & less discussion.
- Can choose a track that focuses on a particular issue, service or population. To expand our knowledge base, we tended to attend different programs and rarely saw one another during the day.
- This ties in to our recent strategic planning process. Had to look carefully at what we do and how to make the best use of our scarce resources, while remaining focused on what our customers want and need. Some of these changes are happening quickly and staff have little time to adapt. But these changes are happening in libraries all over the world.
- I see 2 main factors: (there are others) Technology has changed almost everything that libraries do. We live in a consumer culture where people have many choices in spending their dollars. As a result, customer expectations have changed. Libraries now have competition.
- In order to continue to be relevant and successful, we need to focus on providing what we are best at offering – what makes us unique?
- Service must be intelligent, responsive & personal. We are all customers and thus are experts on customer service. Get a grip – most organizations are run for the convenience of staff and not their customers.
- Arguments abound in the field, but the bottom line: Catawba County citizens pay taxes that provide library services AND they have a choice to go somewhere else if those services don’t measure up to their expectations. Is everyone who comes in or uses the web page a customer? Is everyone who comes in a patron?
- Frontline staff need to feel empowered to work with the customer who is standing in front of them and who has a problem. Nothing is ever just black and white. There is a lot of “gray area.”
- Look at the library from a customer viewpoint. How easy is it for a customer to: Find their way around in the building – signage. Find what they are looking for. Enjoy the sights, sounds, smells, etc. of the library as a “place.” (Karen’s example here)
- Ditch the rules: take out all negatives and everything that “reinforces a stereotypical impression of the library and/or looks stupid to the average person.” We do this by working as team to look at our rules with fresh eyes (from the viewpoint of the customer). Do we really need our rules, and if so, how do we state them in a more positive way? Share exceptions to rules and then look again.
- Put a positive spin on things and see the glass as half full and not half empty.