The Public Relations Difference

Today I was working on reports and heard the familiar music of our Story Time going, so I glanced over at the cameras to see how many children were participating. What caught my eye, however, was not the children, but the glowing heads of Mindy and Laura as they sang the welcome song. I knew I had to get up and go see what they were doing. I found Kathleen also watching, and she explained to me that they were aliens. As they introduced the letter A, they did mention that alien starts with A. It all became clear to me.

I continued watching for a while as the children happily repeated the alphabet with the ladies and also were quick to pick out the day’s shape – circle, and then watched the short abcmouse.com video on the letter A. All of these new additions (short of the aliens) to our story time are a direct result of surveys taken this past year. Parents wanted to see more “preschool readiness” exercises and more stories in our story times. Our Youth Services team listened and responded.

Meeting patrons’ needs can be tricky, but I think the secret of doing it well is relationship. Mindy and Laura, I know, got MANY more suggestions from their story time survey, but because they knew their audience, they were able to make changes that were of best service to the entire group and actually “doable” as well.

This last week Lisa Robert shared with me a story of one of her Bookmobile regulars. As you may know, our Bookmobile folks have become very adept at choosing items that will meet the reading tastes of their patrons; they are the ultimate “personal shoppers”. However, Lisa had run out of the usual authors for this one patron, so she decided to take a risk and provide a completely new author. What an amazing response she received from the patron who said to her: “Oh, you got my message!” Lisa told her, “No, I didn’t get any message from you.” The patron replied by saying: “I was thinking about you really hard and wanting you to bring me something new to read. You read my mind!”

I won’t go into Lisa’s psychic abilities here, but I do think that because she had developed a relationship with the patron, she had learned to know what she enjoyed reading. This is what customer service is all about – not the mechanical attempt to serve people we don’t know, but the natural outgrowth of service that comes with enjoying real “relationships” with our patrons.

This may mean that you click with a certain demographic of our patrons, while other staff members are able to help and serve others. Yet, even if a person’s reading tastes are different from ours, we can learn how to meet their needs by just getting to know them. This takes conversation and interaction. In our increasingly automated and electronic world, this is where the public library can shine. We hear their voices and respond, whether through a survey, a conversation, or just a feeling…that is what sets us apart and keeps people coming back!