Colette McKenna

Piecing the Customer Service Puzzle

Colette McKenna, User Services Librarian, University of Ulster, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, Northern Ireland

Proactively meeting the needs of our users is the raison d’être of the library at the University of Ulster. By actively engaging with our university community and listening to its changing needs, the library identifies and develops strategies in support of the university’s vision.

We all know that’s not as easy as it sounds. Achieving a balance between setting realistic targets for excellent customer service, measuring them, and getting the job done is the real challenge we face.

The library at the University of Ulster is part of the university’s Information Services Department (ISD). More than 160 staff work in the department which covers Library Services, IT User Services, Corporate Information and Infrastructure, and Reprographic Services, as well as the University Archives Service. The library has around 100 staff and operates libraries and learning resource centers on each of the university’s four campuses. To provide the best possible service to our customers, we recognize the importance of highly motivated and committed staff and work closely with the university’s staff development unit to support library staff.

An active dialogue between ISD and the university communities it serves allows the department to:

• Meet users' expectations and needs for high quality services in IT, information resources and print.
• Deliver these services effectively, efficiently and responsively.
• Develop and enhance close partnerships with faculties and other university departments so as to encourage best working practices.
• Plan ahead cooperatively to keep pace with changing needs, and so provide leadership for innovation.
• Deploy with economy and efficiency resources of people, money, space and equipment.

The department’s work plan is drawn up in consultation with other university departments. Each year, we meet formally with Faculty Executive Committees to share plans and discuss information service provision issues relating directly to them. At these meetings we report on a range of performance indicators established in conjunction with faculty and students. Of course, our customers’ expectations are high, and managing these expectations is where the realistic balance comes in.

ISD’s major projects scheduled for the forthcoming year include a new common staff desktop (including file and print facility), a document management system and a re-design of the computer lab.

Performance indicators

At the library our service targets include performance indicators falling into the following areas:

• Access to information.
• User support services.
• Study facilities and services.
• Consultation with users.
• Library staff development.

These indicators allow us to report back to users on our performance and identify weaknesses. Obviously, it’s not just about setting targets. We have a monitoring system behind each target to ensure there are no surprises when it comes to end-of-year reporting.

Of course, neither targets nor indicators should remain static. You’ve got to shake things up every few years, to look at new ways of doing things and incorporate new ideas.

Building relationships

Front-line customer service at the library is the responsibility of our User Services team. Members of this team include library managers on each campus, and a customer support librarian working cross-campus. Each university faculty is assigned a faculty librarian, also a member of the team, with cross-campus responsibilities. Faculty librarians are supported by assistant librarians on each campus.

Faculty librarians engage with our customers by sitting on faculty boards and sub-committees concerned with teaching, learning and academic support services. They consult formally with deans and associated representatives on an annual basis to inform and prepare budgetary estimates of information requirements.

Ongoing listening to these customers is essential. For example, faculty librarians gather feedback from faculty and students regarding trials of electronic resources.

This information is then used in making purchasing decisions. In addition, they engage with faculties at course program validations. Provision of information resources is vital for the auditing and accreditation of courses and it certainly raises job satisfaction levels for our staff when faculty come back with comments regarding the excellence of our resources and services.

The User Services team also provides information skills sessions tailored to meet student, academic staff and researcher needs. These are complemented by Web pages and user guides for specific subject areas. In response to user comments on the availability of resources, much emphasis has been placed on acquiring digitized material and developing online resource lists. These recent initiatives also benefit our increasing e-learner community.

Complementing the team’s activities are those performed by the customer support librarian whose cross-campus duties include supporting non-traditional users, coordinating health and safety matters, and responding to comments made by students and staff. Our team continually explores new ways of involving the student body. In collaboration with colleagues in the Information Services Department and in consultation with a representative range of students and staff, the customer support librarian has developed the ISD Student Charter (  www.ulster.ac.uk/isd/charter.) The charter sets out the standards of service the university aims to provide in terms of library, IT and reprographics services. Twice a year, the customer support librarian and campus library managers meet formally with the students’ union to discuss issues pertaining to each campus. This is a really useful channel of communication with our students, a group with whom it is becoming increasingly difficult for the library to engage.

The library’s user community doesn’t end with faculty and students. The assistant director for library services and the customer support librarian regularly meet with institutions in the further education sector with which the university has established partnerships. The ongoing drive towards increasing national collaboration in course provision means faculty librarians need to be closely involved, liaising with library counterparts from other institutes, as well as faculty.

There are also new customers to take into account. In the past year, the university has created a number of research institutes. To meet the information needs of these institutes a cross-faculty working group has been created, including members of the Information Services Department. We need to anticipate and meet information needs of these institutes and at present, the viability of an institutional repository and digitization of local resources are being explored.

Collecting feedback

Balance is important, not just in assessing performance but also in understanding our customer needs and evaluating feedback. Measuring success shouldn’t just be a matter of counting things; we need also to look at people’s perceptions of our services. The qualitative is just as important as the quantitative if you are looking for the most rounded picture possible. We therefore rely on several feedback mechanisms.

In addition to gathering quantitative data, we collect informal verbal feedback and examine meeting reports of staff and student consultative bodies. Using online forms, available via the library website, we invite “3 Cs” (Comments, Compliments and Complaints) and we’re committed to acknowledging receipt of these and replying, if requested, within three working days. Underpinning these efforts we also participate in surveys, collecting both quantitative and qualitative data. We get comments on our service and resources from final year students through the university's annual questionnaire surveying students’ experience at the university. All these insights are valuable pieces in the jigsaw that reflects students' views and perceptions.

This year, we participated in the LibQUAL survey (  www.libqual.org.) It’s the first time we’ve undertaken such a wide-ranging survey of students and staff and we’re keen to gain as much information as we can about their perceptions and expectations. We surveyed all our users via the online questionnaire with a response rate of 7.2%. At present, we’re analyzing results and awaiting outcomes with interest. Initial findings indicate a need to improve the library as a place and to look at the effectiveness of our user communications. It is likely we will participate in LibQUAL again in two to three years, giving us sufficient time to analyze results and take action to improve services where appropriate.

What we like about LibQUAL is that, as well as collecting plenty of quantitative data, there’s an opportunity to insert qualitative questions. Free text comments we’ve received in response to these are varied, naturally, with respondents referring to library staff as both “excellent, helpful, knowledgeable and courteous” and “cheeky and unhelpful” and to our resources as “awesome” and “amazing” or lacking in computers, books and specialized information. Qualitative feedback becomes so much more useful with the benefit of critical mass to help identify real patterns and areas for improvement and weed out respondents who may just be having a bad day.

Delighting customers

One final initiative to note is the Business Process Change Group, recently established at Ulster. The group’s remit includes reforming the management of the student experience from initial contact to registration and throughout the entire teaching and learning experience. Its findings will inform our future strategic decision-making and target setting.

In the end, our ultimate aim is to exceed our users’ expectations, throughout their experience at the University of Ulster, by delivering excellence in all aspects of our service. We want to get the balance right and delight our customers, whatever kind of day they may be having.

About the University of Ulster Library

The University of Ulster Library operates libraries and learning resource centres on each of the university’s four campuses – Coleraine, Jordanstown, Magee and Belfast. The library holds one million books and subscribes to 4,314 print journals. In addition, it provides access to more than 10,000 full-text electronic titles. Some 15,000 monographs are added to the library’s stock every year and more than 400 electronic books are also available.

  http://library.ulster.ac.uk/