Training Library Staff and Volunteers to Provide Extraordinary Customer Service

Citation

Goodvin, R. (2008), "Training Library Staff and Volunteers to Provide Extraordinary Customer Service", The Electronic Library, Vol. 26 No. 5, pp. 767-768. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470810910846

Training Library Staff and Volunteers to Provide Extraordinary Customer Service is a training manual that delivers practical advice for teaching all levels of library employees about the importance of customer service in the library.

The authors begin Chapter 1 by identifying and exploring “ten crucial concerns” that affect a library's ability to provide customer service. After each of the concerns is examined at length, they are reiterated in a section that discusses them in relation to children and youth.

The next two chapters focus on training staff and volunteers. Training guidelines for different levels of staff, management expectations, and training priorities are the core of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 not only deals with the specifics of training and how to tailor training to the library environment, but also includes a significant section regarding library volunteers and their training needs.

Chapters 4 and 5 concentrate on the customer service essentials of customer needs and feedback. In preparation for identifying, assessing, and anticipating customer needs, Chapter 4 includes a variety of scripts for practice and/or role playing and dispenses advice on how to write your own scripts for particular situations or common concerns. Chapter 5 is all about customer feedback; ways to collect it, how to track it, responding to it, assessing it, and using it in training.

Chapter 6 functions as a way to blend the previous four chapters together by implying that a staff‐development day can be an excellent way to provide customer service training across all levels of staff. The authors warn that planning and organizing a staff‐development day requires a good deal of time so it important to make it effective.

The last two chapters of the book change direction slightly as they discuss the difference between training and continuous learning and how customer service is enhanced by the continued learning of the library staff. The authors then conclude the manual with approximately 40 pages of “Resource tools for customer service managers and trainees.” These resources include a recommended reading list, a variety of assessment tools, and suggestions for customer response and feedback forms.

Although a worthy manual for all types of libraries, given its attention to library volunteers and services to children and youth, Training Library Staff and Volunteers to Provide Extraordinary Customer Service is probably most useful for public libraries.