Last week, I participated in a training scheme called WorldHost on the Principals of Customer Service. Originally developed to train volunteers and staff in preparation for the Vancouver Winter Olympics, the scheme has further developed for use in the UK ahead of the Olympics and other upcoming events.
As I frequently attend library-focused events, the business/tourism customer perspective gives a different way of viewing things, as library users do have, to a greater or lesser degree, a choice about whether they use and engage with our services.
As my role is focused on customer service I found a great deal of the content highly relevant. Especially the importance of dealing with customer concerns (with the scary statistic that 96% of unhappy customers don’t tell you they aren’t unhappy), something that I’ve seen for myself when conducting our library questionnaire and mystery shopper exercises – frequently we get feedback from students that we simply otherwise wouldn’t find out about, and can then address issues and use it to develop our service.
The scheme also looks at the importance of non-verbal and vocal communication in the communication process, though I’ve looked at this before, body language and non-verbal communication is an area I would like to look at in more detail in future.
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