Customer Education – What is the Point?
Kim Clayton and Rebecca Waechter
Wellington City Libraries.
This well presented paper raised some important issues for us. Wellington Public Library recently reviewed their current Customer Education programme. They consulted nearly a 1000 customers and came up with some interesting results leading them to question assumptions and review their current procedures. They wanted to find out what their customers needed, when they needed it and how they wanted to receive it.
• Are traditional methods of customer education working?
• Do you need a training room?
• If the point of customer education is the customer then where are they?
What they found was:
• Customers do not want group sessions
• They want a librarian to help them one-on-one
• They have a strong point of need – now
The information gathered gave them a new starting point and lead them to:
Point of Need – When do customers want help and information?
Point of difference – Where staff make the difference and confidence is key
Point of Sale – Sell the library in 15 seconds or 15 minutes
The Way Forward – finding a new ‘tipping point’ for customer education, how to reach further and wider to customers with effective use of existing resources?
How to achieve this and make the best use of staff time?
• Staff confidence
Important that staff are confident to deal with the “point of call question” – so they ran a “Database of the fortnight” – with 3-4 questions on a specific database looking at content and access. There was a lot of positive feedback from staff. The questions have become a resource for the future.
• How to meet the customers needs?
They made some business card size cards with the vital information on a particular database. Staff could write extra information on the back.
• Mini Expos
They held one-to-one demonstrations at high peak times in a high location.
• Outreach
Getting out of the library – making different connections – organised sessions with different groups at their place e.g. Probus, ANGO (Association on non Government Organisation Aotearoa)
I found this presentation to be the most useful session I attended. Although I still think there is a need for a teaching room, the above ideas will be taken into account when we plan our User Education programme.
Cathy
