Customer Service Delivery Challenges for the Future

Tony MayManager, Access and Information Services

23 November 2012

“The delivery of great customer service is of paramount importance for organisations of any size or sector”

Monk, 2011, p. 22

What is Customer Service?

Customer service can be defined a series of activities that are designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met customer expectation.

Turban, 2002

Customer Service and the Government

Despite not seeking to turn a profit, most government agencies are pretty similar to business organisations in structure, bureaucracy and general day-today operations.

Customers are increasingly becoming more aware of how government services are funded and these customers increasingly expect the same levels of service and treatment from government agencies that they receive from businesses.

Monk, 2011

Who are our customers?

2012 Customer Survey conducted from April to July

223 responses received

Roughly equal numbers of women and men use the Library

Age of Library users spread evenly between 15 – 74 years of age, with a slight majority falling in the 45 – 54 year old age group

Gender Distribution

2002 (%) 2004 (%) 2012 (%)0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

FemaleMale

Age

0 – 14 15 – 24 25 – 34 35 – 44 45 – 54 55 – 64 65 – 74 75+0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

Education Level

Response Percent0

5

10

15

20

25

Postgraduate DegreeGraduate Diploma or Graduate Certificate Bachelor Degree or Degree with honoursAdvanced Diploma or DiplomaCertificate levelSecondary educationPrimary educationNone

The Future

Maintaining quality traditional customerservice

Delivering good quality digital customer service

The Future

Digital community engagement, aka customer co-creation

Proactive service

Personal connection

Traditional Digital

Face to face or 1- 1 One to many or collaborative

Easy to quantify and measure Harder to measure

Captive audience Widely dispersed audience

Feedback received by organisation

Feedback can be given in an open forum

Staff and resource intensive Highly efficient, small team can reach a large audience

Services available during open hours only, the library is a place

24 hours a day, 7 days a week

Links the customer directly to the collection

Distances the customer from the physical library and collection

Can be slow to change Difficult for long term staff to come to terms with its implications and reach

Few direct competitors Online competitors are innumerable

Easy to market through traditional means

Can be difficult to gain awareness

Changing modes of customer service

The emergence of social media communities require you to track a new set of customer service metrics.

Chung, 2012

What does this mean for your traditional Service Level Agreement?

Customer Service at the State Library

Changes in customer service delivery mechanisms have highlighted the need for a revised Customer Service Charter.

• Provide friendly, helpful and professional service

• Make our collections, information and services accessible

• In person, by phone or online.State Library of South Australia, 2009

Changes in information

• Quantity and Availability• Indexes as large as the Library of Congress created everyday• 24 hours of video loaded on YouTube every minute• Average of 144 million tweets per day• 50 million tweets per day one year ago

• Speed of information• Within minutes, your tweet is indexed and searchable in

Google• What used to require effort is at your fingertips• Crowdsourcing

• Connection is instantaneous Bertot,

2012

Digital customer service

Online customer service becomes an advertisement. Interactions that occur on Facebook pages and via twitter are visible for all to see.

The reason why we use social media is to find people who “like” the library and give them a way to express it. We aim to use platforms such as Facebook and twitter to nurture that bond and move them from like to love. We also want to enable them to share this experience and help bring others into this relationship.

Mathews, 2011

Culture Change

Online customer service is about knowing who your customers are, knowing what they want. Customer service is about your staff knowing not what it is that you do, but why you do what you do.

Sinek, 2009

In the wild

Be well represented in places where the customer digitally “is”

Ensure the unique nature of what we have and what we do is highlighted

Encourage online interaction with defined groups of users

Remind customers of the added value we provide over a simple Google search

Highlight the research quality provided by our online subscriptions which are freely available

Adapt to customers changing needs though the use of feedback and continuous improvement mechanisms

Strive to remain relevant to all customers

Combine through the door with online stats to give a true indication of all customer touches

ReferencesBertot, John Carlo. (2012). Public libraries: current trends and future perspectives. Retrieved 21 November, 2012, from http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~jbertot/Presentations/MACL_MLABertot10May2012.pdf

Chung, Duke. (2012). How to maintain traditional customer service in the social media age. Retrieved 15 November, 2012, from http://mashable.com/2012/03/02/how-to-maintain-traditional-customer-service-in-the-social-media-age/

Dawson, Ross. (2011). 9 trends that will drive the future of customer service. Retrieved 14 November, 2012, from http://ipscape.com.au/2012/11/9-trends-that-will-drive-the-future-of-customer-service/

Fry, Amy. (2009). Lessons of Good Customer Service. Library Journal, 134(14), 33-34.

Mathews, Brian. (2011). Why does my library use social media? Retrieved 13 November, 2012, from http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/theubiquitouslibrarian/2011/07/06/why-does-my-library-use-social-media/

Monk, Peter. (2011). Management: Prioritising customer. Government News, 31(4), 22-23.

Sinek, Simon. (2009). How great leaders inspire action. Retrieved 13 November, 2012, from http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

Solis, Brian. (2012). Business not making the pivot from lip service to social customer service [infographic]. Retrieved 15 November, 2012, from http://www.briansolis.com/2012/10/businesses-are-not-making-the-pivot-from-lip-service-to-customer-service/

State Library of South Australia. (2009). Customer Service Charter. Retrieved 12 November, 2012, from http://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=404

Turban, Efraim. (2002). Electronic commerce: a managerial perspective (International ed.). London: Prentice Hall International.

Zabel, Diane, & Pellack, Lorraine J. (2012). Now Serving Customer 7,528,413 (Vol. 51, pp. 316-318).

Presented by: Tony MayPrepared by: Tony May & Katie HannanAccess and Information Services

State Library of South Australia, North Terrace, Adelaide SA 5000Phone: (08) 8207 7250 - www.slsa.sa.gov.au