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A Course in Customer Service
by Jane Davis
There's a moment in almost every job where you have a psychological break and realize that you just can't do this anymore. In late 1999, I was working for a large cellular phone corporation as a customer service representative. One afternoon, following the fourth or fifth time that day I'd been yelled at for bad reception, billing errors and anything else that might be causing my customers unhappiness; I realized that this was not the job for me. Yes, I wanted to help people, and I wanted to make the world a little better, but being yelled at over things that were completely out of my control was not going to fulfill those goals. Besides, I was very close to 25 years old and discovering that continual migraines and an ulcer were not the norm.
So, I packed my customer service skills in a box along with my rubber-band ball, said goodbye to corporate politics and the craziness of dealing with the public, and went to library school. I was convinced at the time that being a librarian had absolutely nothing to do with customer service. I had visions of quiet days filled with the soft sounds of pages turning, of adorable children and their loving parents gleefully accepting my knowledge. I had the general feeling that people who came to the library would be patient, pleasant, and overwhelmingly happy to be there - and would adore me for my status as librarian alone.
Putting Aside Perceptions
Oddly enough, once I graduated and got into a real librarian job, I discovered this was not the case. I was swamped with students who didn't understand Dewey, or even alphabetization. I was berated for not having the right book in the library, and I was yelled at for things that were not my fault. I was shocked. I did not realize that every single field (professional or not!) was a customer service field. In library school, we discussed the patron and the patron's needs, Ranganathan's Five Laws, and the importance of getting information to the patron. We wrote papers on the nature of information and how to classify it; we discussed the political aspects of librarianship and how to understand our place in the social order of information. But we rarely touched on how to help librarians understand and treat their patrons.
Before library school, I was never intimidated by a library or librarians. Where I grew up, our local librarian was very encouraging and often went out of her way to help out. The Dewey Decimal System was perfectly logical to me, and the idea of spending hours browsing through the library looking for something interesting was never a problem. However, when I got to library school, I was terrified of the great big university library with its Library of Congress classification system. What were these numbers in front of the letters for? And what are these "databases" that I'm supposed to be looking for? But, my professors and fellow classmates helped me figure these things out. Since I was a MLS student, I wasn't afraid of wandering up to a librarian and asking for help. They were to be my peers, of course they would be kind and sweet to me. I was part of the club; I knew the secret librarian handshake.
Patrons' Points of View
But, most patrons do not know the handshake. They don't speak our language. It never occurred to me, nor was it ever mentioned in library school, that our patrons might not be overwhelmed with happiness to learn the complex ins and outs of using the library. Nor was I advised that confused people are cranky people, unlikely to ask for help or to want to return to the place of their frustration. My patrons wanted the information they were looking for right now. They wanted instant information gratification. After seeing first-hand examples of library customer disservice, I began to reflect on my previous training to see where I could apply it to librarianship. Two things stood out: customers are turned off by jargon, and very few customers actually ever complain.
I think these two things are very easy to forget as a young librarian. Not everyone is as excited as you are about learning library things. Very few members of the public are going to care that you know how to access the index of keywords used in Dialog. Not many folks are going to be interested in how the Dewey call numbers are built; they are not going to care about creating a proxy string to allow them access to aggregate databases. Most patrons just want the book or article that they need right now. They don't care how you get it, just get it!
Patrons also are not going to ask you for help. Most patrons will wander in, try very hard to not look lost and confused, and then wander out with nothing, never to return. A library is an intimidating place. It is where you should be smart and you should know where things are - and no one wants to feel stupid. Many libraries, though, are set up for librarians, not the average public. Without our very specialized training, most patrons can't get past the "shush" sign.
Customer Service Lessons
As librarians, we sometimes get lost in our own little world. We forget that the primary reason we are here is to help people find information. How we sort, access, and store that information is not really relevant to the individual patron's need for that information. We need to remember to explain things in way the patron can understand. We need to remember that a library can be an intimidating place. We need to ask people if we can help, not assume that they will seek out help if they need it.
Keeping customers in mind can improve almost every aspect of library access. Is our web page understandable? Does it make sense to non- librarians? Is our reference desk obvious and unintimidating? Do librarians walk the stacks looking for lost souls in need of guidance? Are the books in the stacks clearly marked? Are they even where they are supposed to be? All of these questions are important to keeping a customer service focus in dealing with patrons.
So, until the time when library schools start offering customer service training, remember a few important points. Smile, be polite, and give the shortest answer possible. Be available, smile some more, and always remember: if it wasn't for the patron, there would be no library.
Jane Davis is the Computing Applications Librarian at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, TN. After fleeing the corporate world of customer service, she found shelter in the safety of librarianship and technical services.