Confessions of a Rover

O.K., I admit it. I love roving reference. I know I'm not a good witness since I don't do reference every day (It's like a field trip for me). And I understand the legitimate obstacles: "I'm so swamped, quiet times at the ref. desk are my only chances to answer e-mail"; and, "What if someone comes to the desk with a question and no one is there because you're out roving?"

I could go into detail in response to these, but, suffice it to say that for me, the pros of roving in terms of enhanced customer service way outweigh the cons. It's like being on a treasure hunt. If you love helping people with real reference questions (as opposed to "Where's the restroom?," "Can I use the meeting room?," and "Something's wrong with my computer" questions), then the treasure is the real reference question, and you never know what rock you might have to look under to find one. (If you don't like doing reference, anyway, then don't bother reading further. It won't help.)

I've roved at several different branches and Main and, eventually, I always find somebody to help. Here's my technique (if you care): If I'm swamped at the reference desk, I don't rove (duh). But if I have a 10-minute window when crickets are chirping at the ref desk, a couple of times an hour I'll walk a cycle of the section of the library my desk is assigned to. (I always keep an eye on the ref desk so I can rush back if a customer approaches it.) I scour every book and a/v media aisle, and I look for wanderers out in no-man's land. I don't bother people who are sitting down at a table, but when I find anybody else, I say, "Hello. How's it going? Are you finding everything you need?" or "Can I help you find anything?" Usually, they say, "No, thanks." Almost nobody, nobody (except maybe one teen couple I caught canoodling) acts annoyed at being interrupted. Sometimes I'll do a whole cycle and not find one person who needs help, but I would say at least one out of ten people I ask (maybe more, but even that's an excellent ratio, I think), will tell me what they are looking for and open the door for a reference interview.

(Commercial Break: Sometimes, when I have to walk people all the way back to the reference desk to look something up -- or have to leave them and say, "I'll be right back," so I can go to the ref desk computer -- I will think, "Boy, an iPad would come in handy right now." But that's OK. I can wait for the "powers that be" to come around to the roving value of the iPad.)

I want to tell one story that ended in a compliment so it's going to sound like I'm bragging, but it's such a great illustration of the value of roving, I'm going to share it anyway: One time, while roving the fiction section, I came across a lady who had a list of novels she wanted to find and her approach was just to look through the fiction shelves. I was able to help her find one in the Reading List section (where she never would have thought to look on her own) and place a couple of more on reserve that we didn't have on the shelf. The conversation even opened a door to help her track down a book she couldn't think of the title of and show her how downloadable audio worked, which she had been curious about but never tried -- all this service that I might never have been able to give if I waited around for her to come to the reference desk.

Before she left, she said, "I really appreciate your help. You know, I've been using your libraries for a long time and that's the first time anyone has ever come up to me and asked if they could help me." Ouch! This was at a branch that had well-trained staff with over-all excellent customer service skills, and I bet she was an anomoly. Nevertheless, I hope a year from now, it will be really, really rare for someone to be able to truthfully make a comment like that.

I'd like to hear about your roving experiences, good and bad. If I've been too peremptory in brushing by those two obstacles I led this post with, or there are other problems I haven't thought of (I haven't mentioned shyness, which is another obstacle to roving), please share them by posting a comment.

Your Opinion Counts!

The January Your Opinion Counts! marketing campaign was a huge success with 2327 survey responses received. Great work everybody!
The customer prize drawing was held today and here are the lucky winners:

• Heather Burnette, Main - gift card


• Waheeda Yakub, PCR - gift card


• Rhonda L. Price, SOM - gift card


• J.B. Roberts, Main - gift card


• M.R. Jordan, Southeast - FOL Membership


• Rosanne Virata, Beaches - Booktique Coupon

Winners will be notified in the next few days. Congratulations to all!

Your Opinion Counts!

As announced at LLM, January will be the month to market the Your Opinions Counts! Customer Satisfaction surveys to customers.

You can expect to receive flyers, counter signs and, at some of the branches, posters to promote the survey by January 1st. Signage should be prominently displayed and flyers should be handed out to all customers at circulation during the month. In addition, please verbally encourage customers to take the survey and tell them about the incentive prizes -- four $25.00 gift cards, a one year membership in the Friends of the Library, and a Booktique 10% off coupon.

To enter the drawing for the prizes, customers who take the survey will have to enter their contact information in (any of) the customer comment boxes on the survey. The marketing materials will detail this, but please remind and help customers do this.

We are establishing “pop ups” and the message on check out receipts. We have also requested that ITD to re-establish the survey icon on the catalog-only computers. Finally, Public Information will place a blurb about the customer survey in the next two city e-news editions. They also plan to place a link on the coj.net homepage, in addition to the portal.

Customer satisfaction data is important! Please continue to encourage creative in-house promotions during the month. Don’t hesitate to use the counting opinions bookmarks that you already have on hand, and let Stacie Bucher now if you need additional materials.

Please make sure that you are familiar with the survey so you can help customers, http://www.countingopinions.com/jpl/

Let’s make January a benchmark month for the number of surveys completed!

Best wishes for happy holidays,

Melonee Slocum

Customer Comment Managment

Effective immediately, when entering customer comments from comment cards or from the webpage, please use the new customer comment form at this address:

http://jpl.countingopinions.com/feedback/paper

You will notice several things. First, you can categorize the comment on the form itself, so you will save a step immediately. Second, you are able to send the comment to someone else to respond or review. When you look at your comment reports (now called feedback reports) you will see that you can also go in and check off multiple comments to categorize en masse. Finally, you will notice that you are now able to delete comments, when necessary, from the feedback reports section.

We are a beta test site for this new feedback management form and need to get the form right for our purposes. Please start using it immediately and post your comments and questions below.

Once the form is right, we will be able to use it as a generic form on our website to feed directly into Counting Opinions and as a "stand alone" comment box and/or mini-survey.

More to come!