Laurabelle’s Blog

Lately I've been thinking a lot about customer service, particularly in relation to my own job and the ways in which I deal with those whom I serve, both patrons and library staff. Librarians have a love-hate relationship with the term customer service, stemming from librarians' concept of their purpose and role in information service and generally centering around the words customer and patron. It's an issue that I've already broadly discussed, but it doesn't get less interesting (to me at least), and I've got some more thoughts on the matter.

One of my instructors this summer, a PhD student named Lydia Harris, was quite vehemently against the use of the term customer service. I don't remember all of her reasons, but I remember her saying that she had a problem with the occasional customer-service posture of taking the blame for anything that goes wrong, apologizing, etc. She thinks that undermines our professional authority.

I'm not sure whether I agree with her about whether customer service is an acceptable term (I think that debate is actually rather superficial, since librarians agree on what the service is or should be, and they are at loggerheads only on what to callit). In fact, I tend to use the term just because I can't think of a better alternative.

I do agree with Lydia about not taking the blame. Well, I partially agree. In my position of emailing library patrons when problems arise with the online catalog, I don't want to tell them that KCLS is awful, that we don't have any books that anyone wants, that the catalog is unusable, etc. On the other hand, I don't want to imply that a patron who can't find something in the catalog is wrong or stupid.

I've become fairly fluent, I think, at finding nice neutral phrases that express responsibility and concern for the problem but not guilt. I am sorry that you did not find what you were looking for. I am sorry that there was a problem with your search. I then address the problems and give the patron the best solution I can. Sometimes it can be difficult to maintain neutrality, for example with the two patrons whose searches failed because they misspelled Spongebob Squarepants. (The mind boggles. Who would have thought that I would be able to reuse that email?) I do my best. I try to express changes to the system as improvements rather than fixes, except when there are things that are obviously wrong or broken (which is usually Dynix' fault, not ours!). It's a balance. I want to present myself with professional authority, but I also want to be understanding of those who have difficulties with a system that I have learned to find intuitive.

When I mentioned this to Meg, she said that her difficult balance is between responding to people's concerns and getting stuff done. Apparently Meg's predecessors were antisocial, talked to no one, and spent all their time hidden away in their cubicles. (Typical geeks and admins.) Meg, on the other hand, is very social and a good presenter. She goes out of her way to make herself approachable by staff and patrons. Dealing with people takes up time that she could be spending on purely technical tasks, but on the other hand, the people tell Meg what problems have arisen and what improvements would be really cool. Without their input, the technical duties wouldn't be nearly so useful.

Oh, and speaking of Meg's job, she's leaving at the end of October, probably going to Hamburg. She'll be in Germany, in any case. I'm still kind of shocked, although I might be even more shocked by the fact that Meg told me I should apply for her job. I'm going to apply, but I doubt I'll get it, mostly because I'm still in grad school and have almost no work experience (although Meg's job doesn't actually require a MLIS). I'm only just getting used to being a professional with a Job and a Salary, managing regular work days, balancing my budget. Imagine me with a Real Job? Eeep!