Emotional Customer Service for Library Professionals – Andrew Sanderbeck

Notes from sessions at the 2009 COMO conference in Columbus GA

Emotional Customer Service

Change exercise – identity crisis, exchange name tags & three facts keep passing along like telephone

How can we use in workplace?
Where is quality control in info exchange?
Importance of communication

Patrons come to lib for more than just books, dvds and info and internet access they call come to feel good
What retail stores will you not go back to?

Think about emotional need of patrons, not just physical need

Thoughts lead to feelings that lead to behavior that lead to events that lead to belief systems

Belief systems can be created upon a lie or by what someone told you

How do we overcome that belief system? Consistent good customer service experience

Is every customer a good customer for our library? Is the customer always right?

Seek first to understand then to be understood – St. Francis

Most times we don’t’ seek to understand we seek to respond
Judging stops the listening process
Our goal is to understand even if you don’t agree with them.
Its not fair – fair is a perception

Empathy – are we empathizing with our patrons
Sympathy vs empathy

Customers who leave angry might never come back or might come back angry

Giving training isn’t enough you need follow up to measure success

Giving instructions often aren’t clear to the other person

Stop asking people if they understand

Your patrons only care what you know when the know that you care

Average adult can only listen for in the morning 7-11 minutes before they mentally leave the room, in the afternoon only 4-7 minutes
3 ways to get them paying attention again.
Get others talking
Do an activity
Get them to laugh

The Customer Experience
• Service is often see as merely task/transaction
• Experience is created by consistently exceeding customer physical and emotional expectations
• Expectations judgment customer make as they do business with you
• Challenges to look at service from outside in what are the customers physical/emotional expectations at each moment of contact/connections

Survey of visits to public libraries
Customers noticed
• Bright lighting
• Colors
• Smells
• Positioning of displays
• Employees present/nonpresent
• Asking for help/not help/too much help
• Employees taking amount themselves
• Space
• Noise
• Checkout lines
• Attitude of employees
• Eye contact
• Acknowledgement of patrons
• Going with patrons vs saying its over there
• Having to wait inline
• Acknowledgement/no acknowledgement in line
• Greeting in leaving

Other patrons have told use they would like this to be a quiet area