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Aaron Schmidt recommends occasionally taking a break from "deep thinking about your library" and go on a Service Safari to other places that offer customer service. He recommends a series of questions to ask yourself about your experience as a customer. This in turn can help libraries with evaluating their own services. Other techniques for customer service self-evaluation in this article include: Make a Map: Block out paths created by library users to your services. Think Like a Child (a.k.a."5 Whys"): Figuring out root causes of problems by taking a single statement of a problem and asking "why" five times; an example is given.

This article seems very common sensical, but it still has wise advice about how to deal with customers. I really like the idea of training your customers to BE better customers.

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Neat!

I find the "Hour of Power" concept a little new-agey, but I support the ideas of not checking your email in the first hour (Help Desk'ers excepted) and "eat the frog" first thing.

I was amused by the ignoring email in one breath and recommending customer service in the other; was the author not aware of how customer service works these days? Like Christopher, I did like the "eat the frog" concept, though. I also tried a 10 minute version of the "Hour of Power" this morning (light exercise, repeating things I'm grateful for, revving self up for the day), and it has been good for my mood.

Well, he does say "most of us with jobs that don't require constant on-call awareness can trade e-mail for organization and single-focus work," so it doesn't necessarily apply to everyone. I've heard of the doing the hard tasks first concept, but never called "eat the frog"--that makes it sound a little lighter, somehow!

Every time I look over RUSA's standards, I'm struck by how relevant they are to what we do as customer service professionals.

An article that notes the dwindling demand for general information specialists at the Free Library of Phildadelphia, which used to field 400 phone calls a day among a rotating staff of 14 librarians, and is now done to 1 librarian and 9 assistants who deal with only a handful of phone calls and more often do front line customer service and technical support work, with many information requests now handled by online chat.