Information Outlook, Vol.5, No. 12, December 2001

Talking About Customer Service

by Mary Talley and Joan Axelroth

Joan Axelroth is the president and owner of Axelroth & Associates. She has over two decades of experience as a librarian and a consultant to governments, law firms, corporations and trade associations. She has written and lectured extensively on a wide range of topics, including space planning and collection development. Axelroth has an M.A. in library science from the University of Chicago.

Mary Talley is Axelroth & Associates' senior consultant and project director. She has been providing consulting services since 1983 when she founded Library Management Systems. She has performed information and cost audits for a wide range of organizations, including consulting, environmental engineering, petroleum, manufacturing, and law firms. Talley has her Masters in library science from the University of Michigan.

Customer Service is Survival

If today's information professionals agree about one thing, it is the importance of customer service to the success of our information centers. But after this point, agreement usually ends.

Talking About Customer Service

How we define customer service and what we do to provide it differs as widely in our work places as it does in the general market place. There are those who believe that the ability to provide customer service is ingrained in our collective psyche and, as professionals, the quality of our work should suffice. For others, customer service means standing ready to respond whenever a patron asks for assistance. Still others see excellent customer service as the single most important factor in their information center's survival and provide it from the back office to the front.

With these differences of opinion, many questions arise. Who's right and who's wrong? How far should we go to provide customer service and what is far enough? What does customer service mean to us as a profession and why should we care?

To answer these questions, we must first create a common language of customer service that answers why we care, targets our users, defines the meaning of the word service, and sets methods of measurement in its vocabulary. Without this common language, we will be stymied in our efforts to move beyond delivering service to providing excellent customer service.

Competition and the Why of Customer Service

It's not surprising that our profession is not in agreement when it comes to customer service. In days past, customer service was not a focus of our jobs for an understandable, if not necessarily good, reason — it didn't have to be. We worked on the assumption that serving our customers was the natural focus of our work and, as long as we performed well, no additional efforts were required. Our customers knew where we lived and they came to us, or so we thought, when they needed help. These days, new challenges are shaking loose our old assumptions, compelling us to abandon our old, complacent notions in order to survive.

Now, as never before, our customers (and perhaps more importantly, our potential customers) can choose where they go for information and the information center may not be the first choice. The Internet, end-user databases, individual subscriptions to electronic news media, electronic or print document delivery services, and internal document collections mounted on an Intranet all contribute to a marked decrease in the volume of reference requests directed to information centers. In the focus groups we conduct with users of information centers, participants are increasingly citing the Internet as their most important information source, followed closely by their colleagues. The information center is frequently mentioned as a distant third. Information directors and professionals in all types of institutions confirm that there is a decline in the number of reference and research requests they are asked to handle. The sources mentioned here do not represent an exhaustive list of information choices, but it is exhausting just thinking about the competition.

The choices available to our users affect their expectations of our services and our products. As they experience new and different ways of receiving information, they assess the information center's services against these new experiences. For example, Internet users often develop a host of expectations for library service: they want their information center to provide the same fast and ubiquitous access to the center's information resources and an around-the-clock response to reference requests. Those who have had good experiences with Internet search engines may feel disgruntled and discouraged if the information center's Intranet search engine performs poorly in comparison. Some users will have opposite, negative experiences when they attempt to use electronic information sources. Many Internet users experience a high level of frustration when too much irrelevant information is retrieved from a search engine. These users may look to the information center to provide what they cannot find elsewhere: information that is filtered, on-point, and value-added.

New choices and new expectations force information professionals to compete for customers in new ways. If we are to compete for our customers, it makes sense to look to industry, particularly the service industry, for customer service models. Strong customer service is linked with profitability and survival in business literature and in the minds of industry leaders. This year, two retail giants facing declining profits, Kmart and Home Depot, announced major customer service initiatives to increase their customer bases and prop up sagging sales.

In the fiercely competitive, globalized marketplace, companies no longer rely solely on the advantages of features and price to sell their products. Instead, they emphasize and capitalize on high levels of service to create a competitive edge, and so should we. The most successful information centers understand the impact that choice and expectations have on their operations. They work to anticipate and fill their customers' expectations and information needs by providing strong new services that distinguish them from the pack. They continually pursue ways to attract and hold new customers while serving their existing customer base. Choice creates competition and drives the need for a common language of customer service within our profession.

The Customer in Customer Service

Does it matter how we define the people who frequent our information centers? Creating a common language of customer service and fully embracing the concept of customer service requires a fundamental shift in the way we view these people. We must see and treat them as customers, rather than patrons or users. To accept this notion is to accept that they are actively engaged in selecting and purchasing our goods and services. In other words, customers evaluate our goods and services, then choose to buy them or not. To accept that we have customers is to accept that there is a class of people we want to attract so that we can sell our products and services. To accept that we want to sell our products and services is to accept that we must constantly promote and improve them in order to compete effectively. To accept that we must compete for our customers is to accept that we must run our information centers as we would a business. We cannot expect our customers to see an intrinsic value to our wares nor can we demand that they value us simply because we believe we are providing a beneficial service. As in the market place, our customers will value us if and when they believe we are providing the products and services that they want, when they want them.

The Service in Customer Service

The most effective way we can compete is by providing a singularly high level of customer service. But agreeing that customer service is important is one thing; agreeing what is meant by "service" is quite another. Customer service is an amorphous, hard-to-define concept because it encompasses every facet of an information center's operation, including things we do not traditionally think of as service. It includes the service provider, the products and services provided (research, interlibrary loan, current awareness services, circulation control), how the customer is treated by the service providers, the time and effort that the customer must expend to use the products and services, and the customer's foregone opportunity to do something else (what economists call the opportunity cost). All these things contribute to how the customer experiences the service and whether or not the customer will come back.

We, the service providers, are the most important component of customer service. If that seems obvious, what often is not recognized is that service is provided by more than just the people who respond directly to customer inquiries. It is provided by anyone who answers the phone, sends e-mail, processes serials, or has even the slightest chance of interacting with a customer. Everyone from the serials assistant to the cataloger to the filer to the director is a customer service representative. Each person leaves an impression, whether they are communicating face-to-face, on the phone, or via the written word. Bodies should be upright (not slumping) and faces should be smiling (not frowning). Voices should express interest and concern (not boredom or anger) and memos should be polite and well written (not abrupt or filled with typos).

It is not enough for the service providers to be interested and friendly. The information center must offer the products and services that its customers want and need, not what we think they need. It is not enough to provide the right mix of products and services; they must be made available in such a way that it is easy for the customer to use them. A CD-ROM may have all the data needed but users will go elsewhere if it is too slow, if they are frequently denied access, or if they are kicked-off. Web subscriptions are a waste of money if customers are not trained to use them efficiently. Intranets with poor search engines or none at all are more likely to turn customers away than to connect them with the information center's resources.

Another important component is communications. All materials produced by the information center, whether in print or electronic format or using words or pictures or sound, reflect back on the operation. Examine everything. Written materials include memos to management; the information center's site on the Intranet; notes to customers, whether formal or handwritten; manuals, guides, and pathfinders; and end panel labels, nameplates, and directional signs. The materials should contain accurate and current information and be easy and inviting to read. Manuals should begin with the positive things the center does for its users, not with a list of don'ts. Appearance counts as much as content. A standard look, including format, colors, logo, and fonts, insures that library products are always easy to identify by users and non-users alike.

Finally, how our customers experience the physical environment has an impact, negative or positive, on their overall perception of the information center's service. As with a good hotel, our clientele should feel welcomed and comfortable and they should not have to look too hard before finding what they want and need. The information center should look neat and orderly, not cluttered and claustrophobic. The first condition is conducive to an effective working environmentpeople want to stay and are anxious to return. The second is not. The lack of good lighting (the most common complaint from customers), uncomfortable furniture, and broken equipment will discourage customers from using the facility.

To make matters more challenging, customer service is in the eye of the beholder. If the customer does not experience the service as superior, then it isn't. The following quote captures this idea well.

"Many librarians maintain that only they, the professionals, have the expertise to assess the quality of library service. They assert that users cannot judge quality, users do not know what they want or need, and professional hegemony will be undermined if they kowtow to users. Such opinions about service, in fact, are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the customers' opinions, because without users there is no need for libraries except to serve as warehouses . . . Each customer evaluates the quality of service received and decides when (or if) there will be further interaction with that organization."

Ellen Altman and Peter Hernon, 29 American Libraries 53-54 (Vol. 29, issue 7)

Even more challenging is the fact that the one constant in the provision of customer service is change. Our customers' needs, expectations, and choices are never static. They are affected by many things, especially changes in technology. As a result, innovation is a basic element of excellent customer service (and of a competitive edge, customer loyalty, and profitability) and must be included in the vocabulary of our common language. To provide excellent customer service is to keep pace with our customers' needs by continually generating ideas to improve existing products and services or implement new ones.

Measuring Customer Service

Can the quality of a formless concept like customer service be measured? Yes, but the task requires an honest assessment of what we are doing and how well we are doing it. The process of evaluating every component part of the operation is difficult and time consuming but the end resultthe evolution of good to great customer servicecan be well worth the effort.

Because great customer service starts with the customers' perceptions and needs, the first step is to establish a dialog with them. Since those perceptions and needs are so mutable, the dialog must be on-going, flexible, and conducted in as many ways as possible.

You can create a dialog through the use of focus groups when you want to see the big picture, establish widely-held perceptions, and identify problems. This type of broad, extensive dialog supplies the types of information we need to build long-term, planning goals and change objectives.

Another tool for creating a dialog is the survey. You can use surveys when you need the dialog to produce quantifiable information that can be generalized to a larger population. Focus groups and surveys provide us with a snap shot in time of how things are and what people think at that moment

Although focus groups and surveys can be effective tools, they are impractical for establishing the type of ongoing dialog that allows us to capture fast moving, immediate changes in our customers' perceptions and needs. Learning about these changes as they occur allows us to react quickly and to be flexible. For this, the dialog must be constant, immediate, and less formal. One of the most effective methods is to simply walk around and talk to our customers and non-customers alike. If your customers are located elsewhere, visit them as often as possible or, at the very least, keep in touch via telephone or videoconference. Another method for creating dialog is to review reference requests on a regular basis, placing random, follow-up calls to find out if the service meets expectations or if there is more that could have been done. Attendance at department meetings is also effective, especially if you use the time to respond to issues and concerns and to bring new ideas and information to the table.

The primary rule in the on-going customer dialog is that we must never wait for the customer to initiate it — they probably won't. A common fallacy among information professionals is to believe that a lack of complaints proves that there is good or superior service. At the same time, many believe that if the service were not good, their users would surely let them know. A sad fact is that only two to four percent of dissatisfied customers direct their complaints to the person or organization that provided poor service. Dissatisfied customers are much more likely to tell others, such as potential customers, about their complaints. To combat this situation, look for ways to encourage your customers to talk to you about their experiences with your services, as well as their expectations, needs, and problems. Solicit feedback on research results and products; include an "I Wish" section on your Intranet site for suggestions and improvements; and form user groups among your customers.

Evaluating the information center's policies and procedures is an overlooked, but vital, step in the process of assessing customer service. The center's policies and procedures form the underlying structure for the processes of providing services. For example, circulation policies are part of the structure for allowing customers access to print materials. Librarians have had a reputation for liking rules for rule's sake, and for implementing rules without regard to whether they inconvenience our customers or actually get in the way of the services we are trying to provide. In fact, many policies and procedures are established for our convenience, to serve the center's internal needs, and some of these may have a negative impact on our customers. If we are to be truly committed to creating outstanding customer service, serving our customers' needs must take precedence over meeting our internal needs. This is a balancing act, to be sure, because we must at the same time insure that our information center functions and that it serves the needs of the organization as a whole.

You can start by looking at each and every policy and procedure, written and unwritten, from the customer's point of view. Ask yourself if this rule/policy/process helps or hinders customers from getting what they need. Ask your users the same thing. Consider the language used to express each rule, including rules that are expressed in negative or limiting terms (do not do this, never do that, only do that when). Rules such as "our policy is to never pay for interlibrary loans," "we do not allow customers access to the circulation database," and "we're not in the book buying business" are rules for our purposes and not rules that serve our customers. The core problem for the customer is to locate the data or the book, or someone within the organization who can help when the information staff has gone home. The core challenge for the information provider is to identify the customer's problem and find a way to solve it. Where necessary, rework policies and procedures so that they are customer friendly, expressed as a positive rather than a negative and still serve internal interests and needs. We know information centers that do not buy print materials, but do provide their customers with direct links to online book vendors and manage the service relationship between the customer and the vendor.

In the end, what we talk about when we talk about customer service is survival. A common language of customer service, might, just might, help insure that more of our information centers survive, albeit as changed entities that reflect the same transformations our customers' expectations and information needs are undergoing.