STAR Enhancer: Refresher on Refresh!

Just a follow up from this week's business unit meeting minutes for your refreshing throw-back-to-RFID-training enjoyment...

The Alarm Viewer software is installed on all of the public area staff PCs and is the tool to use when identifying which item has triggered the security gates.

There is always a short delay before items appear on this list as the info has to fly from the gates to the 1LMS to get the details and then back to the Alarm Viewer software. It's got a long way to travel and does it as quick as it can : )

The Alarm Viewer software does an automatic call out to update the item list every 15 seconds, but you can force it to update at your whim! To do this just use the Refresh button.

You can keep hitting refresh until the new items appear.

So go forth and refresh to your hearts alarming content.

Side note - for related info also see the previous post for info on what to do when a gate goes MIA from the Alarm Viewer.

STAR Enhancer: what to do when a gate pulls a magic trick

As masters of observation I'm sure you all know that we have a total of three RFID security gates - two @ Unley and one @ Goody.

They are named based on their locations:
FE-GATE-UN-OX (Unley gate, Oxford Terrace side)
FE-GATE-UN-CO (Unley gate, Council side)
FE-GATE-GW-CP (Goodwood gate, carpark side...even though yes, technically there is only one side @ Goodwood!)

So, magic lovers, have you ever been looking in the Alarm Viewer software after an item has set the gate alarm off, you've pressed the Refresh button about a million times, but still not been able to find any alarms for the beeping gate listed? And if you use the Gate filter drop down (as shown below), the gate itself has done a disappearing act?

For example...

For some reason that FE have not been able to pin point at this stage of the game, this disappearing gate magic trick happens occasionally on an ad hoc basis...interestingly, it almost always happens to the FE-GATE-UN-CO. So how do you fix this? Well luckily, really easily!

• Go to the 'Suzy the Slayer' Sort Assistant in the Unley workroom and press the Close button on the Sort Assistant software.
• Double tap on the 'Restart Smart Library Services' icon on the desktop.
• Set off the disappearing gate with a secured item so that the alarm beeps. 
• Close and reopen any instances of the Alarm Viewer software, press Refresh and the gate should reappear - abracadabra!

Simple. And now you know, you will probably never need to use this :)

Welcome! What's in a name? Ring, ring, ring...

Now we are free range librarians, roaming the Library Land wilds in our smart-non-uniform-work-wear and assisting our customers wherever they are, it is crucial that we all wear our name badges at all times. For our customers who do not know us, it is super important that when they wander through our doors they can easily identify staff members. Think about your own experiences - how frustrating is it to wander into a business and not be able to locate a staff member to help?

So there are a few simple keys things that we can easily do to ensure that we are visible representatives of Unley Libraries:

1. Captain Obvious says Wear Your Name Badge
   Just pop it on as soon as you get to work and the hard work is done! Too easy. We all have two name badges so you should always have a backup. For those who do stints down @ the 'wood, why not leave one at each branch so you are always ready to go? We should all be wearing them even when we are not STARing as we could get called out, or called upon whilst traversing through the public areas.
   
   
2. Welcome our customers
   This doesn't mean you have to stand at the door and personally ask how everyone's day is going...just have your STAR laser focus on, and be aware of customers entering the library. Helpful hint is listen out for the doors opening and closing - this is especially useful @ the 'wood. It's often the simple, non-verbal stuff that has the most impact. Make eye contact and smile...or say hello.
   
   
   We are all super good at picking up on body language, so if a customer looks like they might need a hand or some info, then ask if you can help them with anything. We all know the common sense place to fall on the spectrum that ranges from 'up-in-a-customers-face' to 'completely-ignoring-the-customer'...we want to be at the 'welcome-hi-we're-here-to-help-should-you-need-it-please-feel-free-to-ask-and-we'll-ask-you-if-you-look-like-you-need-it' mark. Catchy, right?
   
   Also the welcoming factor ties into another of our central tenants - STAR is all about the customer - always and unconditionally. Personal conversations and phone calls should not be a happening while being an Unley Libraries STAR crusader. Not only can the whole library hear you, but it also makes us look unprofessional and disregarding of our customers. Definitely grounds for a meh experience...and meh is what makes customers not come back to us.
   
   
3. STAR bell awareness
   No one knows better than all of us how our customers use our libraries - we are all out there STARing up a storm most days. So please use your honed STAR awareness skills to call for communicate and/or call for backup as required. For example, if you are on STAR @ Unley and need to head up to the non-fiction to help a customer? Then let your STAR buddies know. Wait, your STAR buddy is also busy but there is another STARer out on black boxes? Then ring, ring, ring that bell before you head up.
   
   
   Or, you are @ the 'wood and have to go assist a customer on the public computers and you suspect it's going to take a while, then ring that bell! We all understand the importance and priority of front line customer service and how the customer experience is impacted by that feeling of not being able to locate a staff member.
   
   Just as an aside on this, we are starting to think about how we could potentially utilise the bell system for our customers. Could we have them publicly facing so that customers can also use them to summon us, instead standing there feeling lost? Definitely a topic for discussion - so please add to the comments if you have any great bell related ideas :)

So go forth and be proud to be easily recognised as an Unley Libraries staff member, ready to assist our customers with a smile.

There's a(nother) kiosk in there!

The first of our additional kiosks has arrived @ Unley Library! It is up and operational in the Kid's Space area.

It shares a home (and trolleys) with the existing kid's height kiosk. Thanks to the less angled bench top design of the new kiosk, we are able to have all of the trolleys facing outwards which is so much more professional looking than the sideways trolley we originally thought would be required - so woo hoo!

So what do you need to know about the new kiosk?

1. It's there!
   Please direct any customers you see waiting for the three turquoise-wall-kiosks to this new kiosk-tastic location. Also a great tip to share not only with anyone who might happen to be waiting, but also with any parents with young children. Improvements all around.
2. It's purple!
   At the moment we have set the LED halo to be a bright purple-ish colour. This is so it catches the eye of peeps wandering by, and they have awareness that <pirate language selected> 'ere be kiosks...
   This kiosk is much more visible than the original kid's area one as it isn't tucked in the corner, so hopefully it will get a flurry of attention.
3. It does not have EFTpos facilities.
   So there is no pin pad, and users will not be prompted to 'pay fines'. The total amount they owe will still display up in the right hand corner of the screen though, and they can of course pay on any other kiosk or @ the pod :)
4. Remember the trolleys.
   Now that customers may be using this kiosk area more, please remember to clear these trolleys frequently, just as you do for the turquoise-wall-kiosks.

So go forth and enjoy the new kiosks. The builders will be on site Tuesday morning to screw them in. Keep your ears open for more to come on the new Goodwood kiosk...

First day back, first desk shift.

First day back, first desk shift in over three weeks, and I have a happy customer moment to share :D

Lady came in with her iPad. she was having a problem with her emails being in Italian instead of English and it was driving her up the wall. She and her husband had recently been to Italy for an extended period and she was looking for a way to get her emails back to English - she had no idea how they had ended up in Italian in the first place.

Upon further investigation, only the headers were in Italian. Checked email settings, all in English. Further eyeballing and it turns out only her Facebook emails were in Italian. So checked the Facebook app, app is in English, visited Facebook online - her Facebook was in Italian. With the help of Google Translator (I don't speak Italian) we were able to navigate to Settings and change it back to English. problem fixed. Because Facebook had somehow been turned into Italian, all the notification emails from Facebook were in Italian.

That was the problem, and the problem was solved, and she was very happy, but it was the discussion around the problem that made the experience really worthy of noting. With our new layout and customer flow, I was confident and happy to spend that extra time (it did take some time to suss it all out) focussed entirely on her and the problem at hand. In our previous model, there would have been a queue forming behind her, I would have been on edge, wanting to help everyone in that queue rather than giving her my full attention. I feel so much more confident and less guilty when this kind of focus is needed now. Queues do still form, but somehow this model is less frantic, despite being a little more physically demanding (in a good sense, I need the exercise :D ).

I learnt a little Italian, and she left very happy with a Reboot brochure in her hand.

Auguri,
Ruth
(Auguri = Best wishes in Italian (apparently, I'm not good with languages)...gotta love Google Translator)

A customer is a customer is a customer

Our customers contact us in a variety of ways, and we want to share our fantastic Library Land skills and knowledge with them regardless of what format they contact us in. Probably not sky writing or carrier pigeon (although...) but definitely the major candidates that we openly offer like face-to-face, phone, email and the web.

So keeping the customer experience focus it is essential that we respond to our customers in our same awesome, consistent and timely fashion regardless of what method they use. To this end is is crucial that we keep on top of our LIB ADMIN emails.

While yes, we should also be dealing with these on STAR shifts during the day when time permits, it is often crazy busy with face-to-face and phone customers so the opportunity doesn’t always arise – this is why it is an essential LIB ADMIN task that must be completed each day. We don’t want to leave our customers hanging!

There are always two LIB ADMINers rostered on, usually with one of them starting @ 9:00 AM, so there should always be time to complete this important task…and if there are reasons why this can’t be done or you just need some helpful advice, then call in support from your shelving buddies… and if this isn’t possible then do as indicated in the LIB ADMIN procedures and “If you are not able to complete all of these before the library opens, please let the first STAR staff know that it needs to be completed.”

And remember, if you need a refresher you can always find the LIB ADMIN procedures on the intranet under Library – Policies and Procedures. It has all the good details regarding what tasks are included and how it all works.

So go forth and respond to our customers as they contact us, maybe even if a carrier pigeon is involved :)

Tall Tales and True

Hanlie's post talked about exceeding customer experiences and how that is a great way to not only retain our customers but also a way to turn them into library champions who then spread the word about our awesomeness far and wide! You go, you Adelaide-dwelling good things.

I wanted to build on that and share a couple of relevant stories from my last week of STAR experiences that illustrate how us going to that extra little bit of effort actually makes a difference in the lives of those who visit Unley Library Land... whether we realise it at the time or not!

Last night on the late shift @ Unley I helped a customer that I also served at the same time the week before. She wanted to let me know that last week she was having a truly terrible day and was feeling quite down but after I had helped her out with a few really simple, tiny things and had a chat with her, so felt so cheered up that it turned her day around. I had no idea - I was just offering the same STARtastic service that we all aim for and I've witnessed so many of you offering... but without me realising, it made such an impact on her. She said she loves coming to Unley where we are all so friendly and nothing is too hard, so she always makes an effort to visit when she is nearby - even though her home library is in a large metro council that is nowhere near here. 

At Goodwood last Friday I served a customer who has recently arrived in Adelaide from Iran. He was just so unbelievably happy that there was a public library that was a direct bus route for him to access and we offered free services. This is not something that was available to him in his previous life and it really made me stop and think about what we take for granted. He also showed me a how he had created his own web-accessible catalogue of some Iranian papers and texts (my Persian isn't the greatest so I couldn't read any titles!) and had digitised many himself. The original of one of these digitised texts was lost when the small library it belonged to was destroyed, so his publicly available digitised copy had preserved this work and made it available to all and it has since been viewed thousands of times. Try not to think about the implications of Iranian copyright law and enjoy what is a great global library story ; )

So please share your stories too - you can add comments to this blog post, or even do a post of your own, as you all should have received blog author invites by now. The more we keep this stuff front and centre in our grey matter, the more we will keep focused on all facets of the Unley Libraries customer experience. Love your work, team!

Exceeding Customer Experiences

In my new role my interest in exceeding customer experiences have obviously being renewed.  

I started to evaluate my own personal shopping experiences to see what good customer service actually means to me.  Sadly, my experience is that most businesses get away with just being average. When I compare this

with what we do in the library I realise it is the little extra effort we put in to exceed customer expectations that create library champions that come back more often and share their experience with others. (By the way, did you know that 40% of our customers visit our libraries once or twice a month, but over 42% visit weekly or more?).

Most of our library customers are pretty reasonable most of the time. So how can we continue to exceed their expectations, every single time they interact with us?

I guess it begins with understanding our customer touch points. A touch point is a single interaction a customer has with our library service. These interactions can be anything from a visit to our catalogue, attending a Reboot or Storytime session, the condition and appeal of our collection, the layout of our library spaces, the friendliness of our staff, follow-up email responses, or even a Facebook post or Tweet. 

Every single touch point a customer has with us, has the opportunity to meet, exceed or fail customer expectations.

Keep that in mind when you go about your daily work.  As yourself, “How can I improve on this for my customer?”, or “What can I do to make it easier for my customer?”.  You will be surprised at what we do already, but also how much more we can do to exceed those expectations even further.

Keep up the good work Library Team – you are trailblazers in creating really good Customer Experiences!

Just because we all love stats...

...and, mostly, actually, (if I am going to be honest) because we are forced to keep stats, I have  this afternoon completed by Reboot stats for the month of September and found a very happy surprise - 

September has reached a (so far) record high of 85 people through the Reboot program! 

When the program started in October last year we were seeing about 40-50 people interacting with the program each month, so to see that nearly double now is pretty exciting!

It also gives me a nice little justification into why I am feeling tired and VERY much looking forward to my holidays that start in 1 hour and 59 minutes...not that I am counting... 

Dan and I (and Pen) are off to the Clare Valley and the Barossa for our 1 year wedding anniversary! See you on the other side!! :)

Happy road trip face!

Happy Patrons

 

Thought I would share the happiness.... just had a father with his 2 children visit Goodwood today.  They are members of other libraries, but have used Goodwood on occasion when in the area.  His daughter was enquiring about Kindles (youth), and as we got chatting, her father came over and joined the conversation.

He thinks the Kindles are a wonderful addition to our library.  He is going to ask his local library if they would also look into purchasing Kindles for their own local residents.  He also commented that the Unley/Goodwood Libraries were always so innovative and inspiring.

 Yay us!

As the conversation continued, he added that he previously had some bills outstanding on his card, and we were the only library who was happy to accept payment on other libraries behalf.  This made his experience of using libraries so much easier, and obviously has left a positive impression on him about our own library service.

It was just one of those lovely chats we have from time to time with our patrons.  We both agreed that we were so very lucky to have such a great library service.

cheers

Rachel

Kiosks... Kiosks everywhere!

RFID is about to get bigger and better @ both Unley and Goody Libraries in the next month. But how can that be, you ask?

Well because there is going to be an additional RFID kiosk added at both branches for our customer's enjoyment! How great will that be when it's Storytime / Babytime / School visits @ Goody / Sundays @ Unley / <insert other busy time here> ?

The deets are as follows for Unley:

• The kiosk will be going in the Kid's Area next to the existing kiosk
• It was also be a shorter pedestal 'children's height' one
• They will share a trolley in the centre, the same as the ones against the wall by the lift do
• With some creative trolley wrangling, both kiosks and the three trolleys will just squeeze in next to the catalogue, so the catalogue will be able to remain in it's current location
• The kiosk will be delivered on Friday October 21st and can be put straight into it's location in the Kid's Area. We'll pop some Coming Soon! signs on it until it is operational
• FE will be sending someone on site on Monday October 24th to configure the new kiosk. It should *hopefully* be up and running by the time we open @ 1:00
• The council building guys will be organised to bolt the kiosk to the ground...which is a great opportunity to remind everyone to discourage any munchkins from climbing on said kiosks

The deets are as follows for Goodwood:

• The kiosk will be going on the edge of the Kid's Area, next to the play school window that has the piano on the other side where the little bit of curvy white bench extension currently is
• This bench isn't really used, and this will be a great location for those super busy school visit times, and it's also conveniently located right next to the Holds shelf. Niiice!
• The kiosk also fits really cleanly in this space, which is great, because it didn't fit so well at the entrance where the other two kiosks already reside
• We'll leave this kiosk off during Storytime sessions, and turn it on when the session is finishing up, for the improved experience of all those Storytime families
• It will be an ordinary height kiosk
• The kiosk will be delivered on Tuesday November 1st and can be put straight into it's location in the Kid's Area. We'll pop some Coming Soon! signs on it until it is operational
• FE will be sending someone on site on Wednesday November 2nd to configure the new kiosk. It should *hopefully* be up and running by the time we open @ 1:00
• The council building guys will be organised to bolt the kiosk to the ground

 More exciting info to come...