Evaluating Customer Service
We all know what constitutes good customer service…right? I think we do, but we don’t always provide it. Good customer service requires more energy! Smiling! Making eye contact! Active listening! It can be exhausting.
At Georgia State University Library, we have a customer service policy that describes the service our patrons can expect from our employees. We provide regular customer service training that is unique to our customer service policy, but we don’t have a method in place for evaluating customer service.
We currently are planning a mystery shopper evaluation program. Undercover “patrons” will visit our in-person, virtual, and phone service points and evaluate the service provided. We plan to use a rubric as the evaluation tool, and most of the rubric items are based on tenets of the customer service policy.
What methods have you used to evaluate the customer service provided by your employees? Did you have trouble separating reference skills from customer service? Please add a comment (the comments link is just under the post title) and join in the discussion!
Jennifer@GSU
GLA Assessment Interest Group 
Deborah Davis, Director of Valdosta State’s Archvies and Special Collections,is using surveys from Archival Metrics (http://archivalmetrics.org/ and click The Toolkits in the top-right corner) to help assess customer service. In particular she plans to use the Researcher Questionnaire to measure researchers’ customer satisfaction, timeliness of responses, and helpfulness of staff. Deborah sent me her institutional effectiveness plan, which outlines all of this–and which I think will be next month’s topic!
Has anyone used “quality walks” as an assessment technique? I’m reading an article that mentions quality walks: Pretend you’re a patron. Begin 30 yards outside your library’s main entrance, enter the library, and walk to each service point. Write down what you notice that needs work. This might be a good combination exercise to use with the mystery/secret shopper project.
This is a fun idea! Maybe you could also film them and then have group viewings, to really bring the points home.
Jennifer,
Where did you find someone to do a mystery shopper program for you? We are looking at doing something like that and know that in the past some government have used a program that does not exist any longer.
David,
We are creating our own program, including rubric development and recruiting and training the mystery shoppers. After reading the literature, I feel confident we can do it successfully. That said, we’re treating this as a pilot 🙂 Hopefully, it will work out well, and we can continue it annually.
Jennifer,
Have you heard of any organizations that do this kind of work. We are trying to do this more as a surprise to our city office and I don’t believe I could put together all the work that would need to be done for all the different departments.
Thanks much
David
David, one of the articles I read mentioned a library partnering with a small business development center. One of the services offered by the small business development center was developing secret shopper programs for area businesses. Maybe try contacting an organization like that in your area? In another article, the library asked for the help of the campus HR department. You also could try talking to marketing professors at area colleges or universities. They might be willing to work with you to set up a mystery shopper program as an assignment for their marketing students.
Jennifer,
Thanks much
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