Service Quality

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Service Quality

• The Ultimate Aim

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Service Quality

• Definition
• Service quality encompasses the interactive
  relationship between the library and the people
  whom it is supposed to serve. A library that
  adheres to all the professionally approved rules
  and procedures for acquiring, organizing,
  managing, and preserving material but has no
  customers cannot claim quality because a major
  element is missing- satisfying peoples needs,
  requests, and desires for information.
• Hernon Altman, Assessing Service Quality

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Service Quality

• When library and customer measures of quality are
  not congruent, the library may be meeting its
  internal standards of performance but may not be
  performing well in the eyes of its customers
• Francoise Herbert

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Serving our

• Patrons?
• Users?
• Clients?
• Customers?
• Unless customers and the collection come together
  in a way both interesting and meaningful to
  customers, the library is nothing more than an
  expensive warehouse.

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Customers

• The customer is not always right, but they do
  have a right to express their opinions and to
  learn about the librarys service parameters
• Most customers have expectations about service,
  though they may not always be reasonable or
  realistic.
• What is reasonable and realistic? What is core
  and peripheral? We must decide.

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Satisfaction vs. Service Quality

• Satisfaction the emotional reaction to a
  specific transaction or service encounter. A
  state experienced inside the users head. May or
  may not be directly related to performance
• Service Quality a global judgment, or attitude,
  relating to the superiority of a service.
  Satisfaction levels from a number of transactions
  fuse to form an impression of service quality

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Service Quality

• Multidimensional- content and context
• Content what prompted a visit- particular
  materials or information, study space, etc.
• Context the experience itself- interactions with
  staff, ease/ difficulty of navigating a system,
  comfort of physical environment

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Service Quality

• Performance/ performance-expectations gap
• What is expected and what is actually
  experienced.
• LibQual

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For Customers

• Perception is reality.

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Addressing Service Quality
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Mission Accomplished?

• What is our mission?
• Scrutinize plans and activities/ practices
• Ideal- essential to accomplishment of a given
  mission
• Useful- supportive of mission accomplishment, but
  not essential
• Useless- irrelevant to mission accomplishment
• Counterproductive- obstructs mission
  accomplishment

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Creating a Plan

• Customer Service Plans
• Commitment to high-quality programs and
  operations
• Openness to concept of change
• Responsiveness to the needs and priorities of
  customers
• Commitment to providing equitable access
• Willingness to work together as a team
• Availability of training and professional
  development of staff.

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Hernon Altman, Assessing Service Quality

• Extensive list of questions
• Reprint Guidelines for Customer Satisfaction
  Surveys
• Provide sample data collection instrument