High Quality Customer Experience – learning
from retail
SCONUL Winter Conference 7th December 2012, London
Matt Cunningham, Customer Services Manager
Loughborough University Library
Starting point
 “We’re a Library – we don’t have customers!”
Staffing - changing workforce profile and culture


2004 – 30 staff:
 many of whom had been in post for upwards of 15 years
 100% female (apart from me)
 Little outside experience of customer service outside Library
2012 – 32 staff:
 33% are current or recently graduated students
 6 men!
 a range of nationalities (Nepal, Greece and Ghana) and ages (teens, 20s,
30s, 40s 50s and 60s)
 Library experience no longer essential criteria, customer service experience
and IT skills paramount
 Reflect 2nd Library value (developed by staff and users)
 “Staff that are approachable, helpful, knowledgeable, courteous and take
pride in working for the University Library.”
Challenges and benefits
Challenges
Benefits
 Some resistance from other
teams for dealing with
circulation queries
 Concerns from some staff
about transience of student
staff
 Not all staff are confident about
having a customer facing role
 Higher recruitment burden
 Promotes high levels of
customer care
 Staff from different teams work
together for the first time
 Larger workforce to call on,
freeing up academic librarian
time
 More representative of student
body
Staffing - development
 Mandatory customer care training for all Library staff once every
five years
 Fish – “choosing your attitude!”
 “One stop shop” – integrated helpdesks
 core competencies and a robust referral system
 extensive training programme
 Customer Services Group established (drawn from all teams in
Library)
 Involvement in Library wide projects and cross team groups (e.g.
training/marketing)
Results of changes


IIP 2010:
“A strong learning culture has certainly been well established over the
years, and this is viewed as vital to the continuing success of the Library
in terms of providing exceptional customer service and meeting student
and fellow University colleagues needs.”


CSE accreditation in 2011:
“The commitment of the management team, and the whole staff, to
deliver the best possible service to all users is totally apparent. The
continuing amount of customer-led improvements is impressive...
customer service is at the heart of everything they do.”

Library User Survey 2012 – enquiry desks ranked as the 1st out of 15
Library services users were most satisfied with
Contact details
 Email: M.S.Cunningham@lboro.ac.uk
 Tel (01509) 222353
Source materials
 Changes in CS Team during RFID
 Dissertation
https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/handle/2134/8820
 Conference paper
http://library.bcu.ac.uk/conferencecunningham.pdf
 Staff training
 Mandatory customer care training
http://pdwww.lboro.ac.uk/eventdetails_single.asp?cid=2089
 Fish
http://www.charthouse.com/productdetail.aspx?nodeid=24103