Managers – The Message You’re Sending About Time is Affecting Customer Service
CC image courtesy of Robbert van der Steeg on Flickr
The choice you need to make is will it affect it in a good way or a bad way?
We are all busy. My to-do list is so long at this point I keep a master running list and a small list just for today, because looking at the long list inspires panic.
As individuals, managers and organizations it can be easy to keep adding responsibilities, expectations and tasks to our list and to the lists of others. Especially at a time like this, when you may be short staffed, or just busier than normal (library usage goes up during a recession) or both.
Unfortunately this attitude towards time can really hurt you in customer service. How staff feel about their time and the expectation from management affects how they interact with patrons. It’s the difference between handing someone a call number and vaguely gesturing towards the stacks and leaving the desk and walking the patron to the book. It’s the difference between hand the book over and walking away or asking if you can help them find anything else. It shows up in the type of greeting patrons receive in that minutes of extra chit-chat so many love, in determining if the information they are asking for is really the information they are seeking.
Don’t think it’s just front line staff either. It can mean the difference in pulling that raggedy looking book or letting it circulate one more time, in ensuring the door knobs and other areas are properly disinfected, in how fast a phone call is returned. I could go on but I think you get the idea.
Want to get smart about time? Here are some suggestions from How Smart Leaders Talk About Time on Harvard Business.
1) Establish a shared language that distinguishes between the “pressure on time” and “impact on goals” factors.
Team leaders often fail to make this distinction clear. Tasks are transmitted without specifying if the emphasis on such task is due to:
- a combination of the above mentioned two factors
- the fact the task has a remarkable impact on the individual or group’s goals
- the restricted timeframe within which the task must be completed
2) Reduce those activities that, despite being important, must be performed under pressure. (emphasis mine)
A successful leader reduces “urgent and important” activities to a minimum, by monitoring:
- How tasks are planned and delegated.
- How “urgent and important” activities can be reduced.
- How much free-of-distraction time people have for high-impact activities.
Why did you particpate in the Library Day in the Life Project?
Was is self promoting narcissism? Desire to share the most boring mundane details of your life with others (wake up, make coffee)? Or something else.
Sarah Faye Cohen shares why she didn’t participate and she’s wondering why others did. A legitimate question, actually one I’m curious about myself. The first two rounds of Library Day in the Life were small, I think less than 30 people total, then somehow this one took off, I’m not sure if it was David’s post or the mention on LISnews or what, but all of a sudden there were loads of people I’d never interacted with doing it (over 200 last count). Whoa. Awesome. Scary. Exciting.
I can’t speak to why everyone did it but I can speak for myself.
“who we are writing these memes for.”
Well, the whole thing started because I look at my blog stats and the search terms used to bring people there, the most popular ones were: librarian’s day, what it like to be librarian, what’s it like to work as a librarian, you get the idea. I assumed, because how could I know, that these were searches done by people considering librarianship or just curious. So I thought I should blog my days, give the people what they want right? But there are so many of us doing so many things, my days wouldn’t be a good representation, so I tried to start the meme. I didn’t give it a lot thought, I just picked some people doing new and interesting things and linked to them. I hoped people would share what they did and give insight into all different aspects of libraryland and they did!
So I wrote this meme for the people who wonder what a librarian’s day is like. Who are those people? I don’t know, I generally don’t ask patrons why they want information, I just give it to them.
I wrote the meme for myself too. I wanted to know what other librarians were doing, there are so many new exciting positions out there, I wanted to know how are they spending their time? I’m selfish like that. 
After the first round I got a lot of email from professors, librarians and lots of other people saying what a great resource it is. Lets face it if you’re considering being a librarian today there aren’t a lot of resources for you, the last book is from 2003 and my job didn’t even exist in 2003. I’ll admit some of the blog posts are more informative than others and I’ll be suggesting a better format if there is another round. But over all it accomplishes what I’d hoped for; a wide range of library people, not just MLS holding librarians you don’t have to have an MLS to work in a library, writing about their average day.
She next says:
But this meme leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth in part because I don’t see the meme itself having a role in our relevance, or our creativity, or out sociality (is that a word?!).
Who says that was the point? There are a lot of people working hard on our relevance, creativity and our sociality, I like to think I’m one of them. But the purpose of the meme was to share what our average days were like, with each other, with students, with potential library workers everywhere. It did that. Doing this meme didn’t stop me from working on our relevance, creativity or sociality, and in face it might have helped me do those things better. I understand Sarah and Amanda’s point, but you can be talking about something AND doing it at the same time, the acts are not mutually exclusive, but that’s another blog post.
I could go on and on but in I think Meredith Farkas has written a reply that covers most of what I’d say and I’m sure she’s written it better than I could. 
But at the end of the day, in a nut shell, why did I do? Because its my blog and I could.
A Day in the Life of a Digital Branch Manager
I took these notes today as part of The Day in the Life project, if you would like to read more please see the wiki, if you’re interested in how it all got started read this post
- First thing in the morning with coffee in hand I answer emails, and DMs from Twitter that had come in the night before. Being on the East Coast a lot comes in after I’ve stepped away from the computer for the night.
- Arrive at work – First thing answer emails, make a few updates the website, chat with Head of Teen Services about updates to her page.
- Meeting with Director – we’re moving her blog from Blogger to Wordpress because of some of the options she want, and walk through adding some RSS feeds to Outlook.
- Back to website
- Deal with paycheck problem
- Work on patron survey about the website that will go up on Monday.
- Spent most of the rest of the afternoon working in policies one for Social Media in general and one specifically addressing Flickr. Both of these will be part of the Digital Branch Guidebook when its complete. Part of this will address how the Digital Branch helps the library meet its mission and vision statements, and because we’re in the middle of updating these I spend sometime going back and forth between the old and the new.
I think what amazes me most as I read through m notes of the last week is how much of my time is spent, reading, writing and well, just thinking. I didnt’ really think being a Digital Branch Manager was all that different from other jobs I’ve held, but I can see there are less completed items in my day. Less projects with a clear beginning and a clear end. As someone gets a sense of accomplishment from starting and finishing clearly defined projects I wonder how this will affect me as I go forward.
Day in the life of a Librarian Day 4
Thursday was a rather unremarkable day for me, so I’ll spare you most of the details
Checked email, tried to post notes from Day in the Life, but thanks to Dreamhost my site has been down most of the week. Unhappy does not do justice to my mood about this.
Got to work, talked with IT, we’re using the multimedia room for the Handheld Librarian conference later today and I’ve never used it before and wanted to be sure I set everything up correctly. Also gave me a chance to ask the staff member to be a part of Super Friends, I’d be missing her all week. She said yes – excellent now we have one member of IT on board.
Room set up and then back to my office. A staff member brought me peaches! Lots to do today but a lot of time will be taken up with Handheld. Spent most of my day in the Multimedia room for the Conference, we had some trouble getting in as I understand a lot of people did.
Wrote a post on my blog for library staff
Took the boys for a long walk even though it was sprinkling the whole time, we all enjoyed it!
Worked out, ate dinner and read
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