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Customer Service Excellence Update

By Peter Dennison, on 21 February 2018

Following the UCL Library Services Staff Conference in July 2017 which focussed on Customer Service Excellence, a series of CSE initiatives have taken place.

Customer Service Training

During July, August and October 2017 over 200 staff participated in Customer Service training which was carried out by an external trainer, Kathy Stiff.

Kathy Stiff

Kathy has over 20 years’ experience of working in both the private and public sectors, and her training focusses on enabling people to understand their personal impact before affecting behavioural change. Kathy’s training included areas such as managing your attitude, building rapport, the power of positive language, taking responsibility and managing expectations.

Customer Service Champions

Kathy additionally trained 23 Customer Service Champions. Our Champions are volunteers who will play a key part in embedding a Customer Service ethos within Library Services culture and will additionally support staff in training and developmental activities. A Champions training subgroup has been formed which will be responsible for re-developing the initial training provided by Kathy Stiff to roll out to new staff and to any staff who missed out on the training last year.

The Champions represent almost all of Library Service’s frontline and support teams. They will play a key role as we continue on the CSE journey and they have a job description which includes:

  • Knowledge of the UCL Library Services CSE Handbook and Service Charter
  • Participate in new Library staff inductons, providing CSE training and guidance (including the Handbook)
  • Take part in regular CSE refresher sessions with groups of Library staff
  • Encourage awareness of the CSE Accreditation process and award
  • Take part in CSE focus groups, both internally and with the UCL Students’ Union
  • Each Champion will represent a team / library / cluster, and is responsible for CSE communications to and from this group

Customer Service Handbook

A CSE Handbook has been produced which will be distributed by Customer Service Champions to every member of Library staff. The purpose of the Handbook is to:

  • Promote a consistent standard across the service, whilst acknowledging different libraries’ personalities
  • Convey CSE concepts in a concise fashion, including guidance for interacting with customers and developing individual CS skills
  • Benefit Library staff as well as customers – eg ’colleagues as customers’

The Handbook contains hints and tips for interacting with customers (in person, via telephone, email and social media); techniques for improving customer service skills; managing expectations; dealing with difficult customers and colleagues as customers.

It will be updated annually and your feedback and suggestions for improvement are welcomed.

Next Steps

The Library Services Managers team has been carrying out work to further our CSE ambitions. This has included the creation of a list of user profiles and a service catalogue to formally identify who our users are, what services they are entitled to access, how they access them and what services we actually provide.

Focus Groups will be taking place in April at different Libraries with students. Four lunchtime sessions will be taking place and will cover topics such as communication channels; study space use and refurbishments; library opening hours and the provision of services in the New Student Centre.

Separately, a gaps analysis will be carried out to identify areas which require further work and development in the context of CSE Accreditation. Examples include the establishment of rigorous service standards and a feedback database. We will additionally be seeking evidence to demonstrate how we meet CSE criteria and to this end case studies from across Library Services will be used to demonstrate this.

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