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!
