[Publib] RE: Librarian Talents -

[Bookbitch]

A couple of years ago we had Robert Spector as the keynote speaker for our
annual training day.  He wrote The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service
Excellence: A Handbook For Implementing Great Service in Your Organization
(which is an excellent book on customer service) and he gave a terrific
talk.  One of the things he said that really struck me was to "hire the
smile".  

The idea is that you can train any reasonably intelligent person to do
anything in a library, but you won't change someone's personality.  It's
easy to see, just look around at the people you work with.  The ones who
genuinely like working with the public and care about the patrons do a much
better job at customer service than anyone who has to be trained to smile.  

My library offers several workshops every year on customer service, and they
are very well done. However, even though management has the option of
sending employees with customer service issues to these workshops, and they
do send them, I've yet to see a change in anyone because of customer service
training.  The grumps are still grumpy!

Stacy Alesi
Library Name *Censored*
Boca Raton, Florida
(& MLIS student at USF)
 
I am the BookBitch 
www.bookbitch.com <http://www.bookbitch.com/>  
Giving away almost 50 books this month, including POWER PLAY by Joseph
Finder, THE WHEEL OF DARKNESS by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, and 8
signed thrillers!
 

________________________________

From: publib-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:publib-bounces at webjunction.org]
On Behalf Of Kathryn Bloomberg - Rissman
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 7:32 PM
To: rballiot at oceanstatelibrarian.com; Knieriem, Lesley;
publib at webjunction.org
Subject: [Publib] RE: Librarian Talents - 



I have to weigh in here.  Having attempted to do both -  train someone on a
III or other integrated library system and teach someone people skills; I
have found it much easier to do the former. 

Kathy Bloomberg-Rissman

Director

Upland Public Library

Upland, CA