Customer Service Stories

This is the first in a series of excellent customer service examples from our staff.  Reasons for posting these are to publicly acknowledge excellent work, and in case they offer new ideas for others. 

This one was taken from a performance appraisal – name changed to protect the innocent:

A typical example from this past year was when Sally received a phone call at the Porter service desk from a student asking how to renew their hold requests that had expired that day.  The student explained that they only come to the library once per week because they live in Cambridge, and that they were trying to arrange to pickup all of their hold requests on the same day.  Sally was able to quickly retrieve the hold request information from the Cancelled-Expired Holds report, confirm the titles with her client over the phone, and arrange to follow up with them via email after her desk shift.  After her desk shift, Sally retrieved two of the items from the Porter stacks, and followed up with her client via email letting them know this, and that the remaining books from the other TUG locations were already in route to their home locations.  Sally informed the patron that they have the option to have their hold requests routed to the Musagetes Architecture library in Cambridge for pickup, and provided them with the hours of service, and the daily transport times in case it was more convenient for them.  The patron relayed that they did not realize that there was a UW library in Cambridge; how extremely helpful this was; that they would be making very good use of the Musagetes Library; and how grateful they were for this bit of information, as this is much more convenient for them. 

If you have other excellent service examples please do share them for posting.