Customer Experience in Public Libraries

ABSTRACT

Public libraries today are gingerly stepping into the emerging philosophy among successful businesses around the world: customer experience. Libraries are hiring staff with “customer experience” in their title, others are curious and want to learn more. Most of the resources currently available to libraries hoping to get started take a corporate approach particularly as it impacts financial success. The bottom line is that all of us are in the customer experience business, whether we know it or not. It goes to the heart of everything we do – how staff interact with the public and each other, the value libraries provide to a community, even the cleanliness of the restrooms. Additionally, many of those companies that library users experience in their daily lives – health care, insurance, retail – have already jumped on the customer experience bandwagon, overall raising the public’s expectation of what they should experience in libraries. How and where to start? How does a library build a road map to develop a customer experience philosophy and culture, which staff will embrace and support? When building a new library how do you design that building using a customer experience lens? Columbus Metropolitan Library has spent the last 5 years mapping out a customer experience practice, which includes staff training, journey mapping, customer insights, customer engagement training, and library design.