[Publib] RE: Librarian Talents -

[Robert L. Balliot]

Greetings,

I am not sure how high end retail clothing sales
relate to public libraries.  I have shopped at
Nordstrom's and I don't recall anyone smiling at
me.  I dress down to shop and salespeople 
tend to gravitate towards those
people who appear to have money to shop. If I
am suited up, everything changes.

I don't think that you can have someone attend
a workshop once a year and expect any measurable
results, unless the workshop reinforces
a systematic customer service methodology. 

*************************************************
Robert L. Balliot
1-401-441-5763
Skype: RBalliot
Bristol, Rhode Island
http://oceanstatelibrarian.com/contact.htm
*************************************************

-----Original Message-----
From: publib-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:publib-bounces at webjunction.org]
On Behalf Of Bookbitch
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 8:37 AM
To: 'Kathryn Bloomberg - Rissman'; publib at webjunction.org
Subject: [Publib] RE: Librarian Talents - 

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