The Olympic training field for planning quality library services - Marketing of Library and Information Services

Specifically, the Citibank (survey) companies do the following:

1. promote from within;

2. continually monitor service levels via service audits;

3. make sure senior management is actively, visibly committed to service excellence;

4. regularly recognize and reward outstanding service by employees;

5. invest heavily in formal, ongoing training;

6. practice teamwork and open communications;

7. measure service performance against explicit standards;

8. actively seek customer feedback on service and use it in decision making;

9. use employee attitude surveys to continuously assess the organization's internal health; and

10. have a strong sense of employee accountability ("Each of us is the company"). (Disend, 1991, pp. 15-16)

Disend (1991) reports the results of additional surveys which offer concepts that libraries might find helpful in developing customer-driven goals and objectives which are customer driven. The following represents additional key survey results related to organizational approach which might be adapted or adopted by libraries in their pursuit of offering customer-focused services:

* Market-driven (customer-driven) innovation . . . creates value for the customer. * The value the customer receives is more important than the mere cost of the product or service. * It's best to expand . . . by edging out with small, sure steps, not giant leaps. * They are obsessive about knowing, even better than customers themselves, what customers want. * They create and manage customer's expectations. * They design their products and services to maximize customer satisfaction. * They make customer satisfaction everybody's business. (pp. 17-18)

Indeed, service organizations such as libraries need to continuously provide, as well as monitor, those mechanisms which successfully collect data from customers. These opinion-gathering devices or processes need to be in place to position the library so that it can readily adapt to changing market interests. Examples of such mechanisms might include customer report cards such as annual surveys which ask customers to rate the library against other information sources which the customer uses. Community surveys conducted every four to five years can provide increased information about a broader base of customer and potential customer needs and wants. Quick response cards titled, "Please comment on the service you received today" will offer insight for consideration. Focus groups organized to allow the library to probe for ideas about new products and services and evaluate existing ones will be useful. And, equally important, the administration of ongoing data retrieval needs to become second nature to staff. As a result, data collection will become perceived as a "normal" business activity to staff, while eliminating its potential threat to the status quo.

Often, in an effort to save time or money or both, administrators elect to conduct customer surveys and engage focus groups without the assistance of an outside independent resource. Librarians collecting and interpreting data collected from customers without professional guidance are similar to lawyers serving as their own counsel or doctors being their own physician. Customers may not be totally honest when asked to say what they think to the same people who, for instance, help their children find resources for homework assignments.