Excellence in Customer Service: A "Standard" Approach MLA Session 5

James Lund, Red Wing Library and Andy Stehr, Rochester Public Library and Kim Edson were the session presenters.

The Red Wing and Rochester Public Library decided to standardize their approach to customer service to help patrons and staff have familiar and predictable expectations. Make the patrons feel ownership of the library and empower staff to make decisions bases on the library's core values.

James is passionate bout customer excellence. He encourages his staff through modeling behavior, living it and encouraging it. He spoke highly of the book The Starbucks Experience-5 Principals of Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary. In this book the five expectations are:Make It Your Own, Everything Matters, Surprise and Delight, Embrace Resistance, Leave Your Mark. He gave examples of these principals and how the are helping staff and patrons have a better library experience.

Andy and the Rochester Library had a similar approach and had employee workshop and empowered staff to make decisions and suggestions for improvement.

A informative workshop with many ideas and thought of how to improve your own library.