Soft Skills for School Librarians

Course

Customer Service [2:51]

Learn customer service tips that will help you help your stakeholders get the most out of the library's resources.

Just as good customer service helps businesses thrive, employing some key customer service skills in the school library can ensure that students, teachers, and administrators get the most value out of its resources.

Let's talk about three important strategies that can help you meet your customers' needs, and make sure that those customers keep joyfully coming back: building relationships, serving others, and getting—and acting on—feedback.

At the heart of good customer service are strong relationships. Students, teachers, and administrators are more likely to revisit the library when they feel like the library staff knows and appreciates them. Show everyone that comes into the library that you care about them and want to serve them. It can be as easy as remembering someone's name when they enter the room and inquiring about something they mentioned the last time they came in.

At the beginning of the school year, using "getting to know you" activities can help jumpstart your relationships with students. Another strategy is to upload a photo of every student into your learning management system. Even simple place cards with students' names on them can help you make those first connections with students more quickly. When a customer is treated as a unique individual, he or she feels more valued. And it's a virtual guarantee that the customer will come again.

And when they do come in, be sure that you are offering excellent service. As a librarian, you are a trained problem solver and question answerer—and if, in a certain case, you don't know the answer, use your network to point the library user on the right path. If community members learn to trust that you are a reliable source for help, word will spread and even more customers will show up.

Finally, customer service gets better when you know what's working for your library users and where they have suggestions for improvements. Actively seek out feedback from your community through informal conversations, surveys, and focus groups. When ideas come in that you can act on, do so. And if you can't accommodate them at this time, explain why. Transparency builds trust and lets others know that you gave thoughtful consideration to their needs so they are more likely to continue sharing them in the future.

These fundamental skills—building relationships, serving others, and gathering feedback—can make your library into one that students and teachers will be excited to return to again and again!

Customer Service Pledge

Exemplary customer service starts with setting an intention to build strong relationships and put customers first. Writing a customer service pledge can help you identify the ways you commit to curating top-notch experiences for everyone who uses the library. Read through some sample pledges in the Resources below and create your own in the Reflect & Practice activity.

RESOURCES:

Activity 4.1_Soft Skills for School Librarians

Form

REFLECT & PRACTICE:

After reading some of the example customer service pledges in the above form, use its guiding questions to help you write one for your school library. Start with making a list of what you want customers to feel when they come into your library, what you want them to know about your library, and what you want them to have access to when they come into your library. Using these ideas, write a customer service pledge.

MLA Citation

"Soft Skills for School Librarians: Customer Service Pledge." School Library Connection, April 2019, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2194642?learningModuleId=2194635&topicCenterId=0.

Entry ID: 2196948

Additional Resources

Bibliography.

About the Authors

Rebecca J. Morris, MLIS, PhD, is teaching associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Computing and Information. She earned her master's degree and doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh and her undergraduate degree in elementary education at Pennsylvania State University. Rebecca has published articles in journals including School Library Research, Knowledge Quest, School Libraries Worldwide, Teacher Librarian and the Journal of Research on Young Adults in Libraries. She is the author of School Libraries and Student Learning: A Guide for School Leaders (Harvard Education Publishing Group, 2015). Rebecca is a former elementary classroom teacher and middle school librarian.

Email: rmorris@schoollibraryconnection.com

Twitter: @rebeccajm87.

Carl A. Harvey II, MLS, MS, is associate professor of school librarianship at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia. Harvey received his master's degree from Indiana University and is the author of six books, most recently The 21st-Century Elementary School Library Program: Managing For Results, 2nd Edition. He is a past-president of the American Association of School Librarians, and his school has been the recipient of the National School Library Program of the Year.

E-mail: charvey@schoollibraryconnection.com

Twitter: @caharvey2

Casey Rawson, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she earned a PhD in 2016 and an MSLS in 2011 with a concentration in school library media. She also holds an MAT in middle grades education from the University of Louisville and is a former sixth- and seventh-grade science teacher. Her research interests include teacher-librarian collaboration in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) content areas, diversity and equity in youth services librarianship, and portrayals of scientists in children's literature. Her articles include “Are All Lists Created Equal? Diversity in Award-Winning and Bestselling Young Adult Fiction,” which received the 2012 YALSA Writing Award; and “Rethinking the Texts We Use in Literacy Instruction with Adolescent African American Males,” written with Sandra Hughes-Hassell, which received a 2013 Virginia Hamilton Essay Award Honor Citation.

Seth Taylor, MFA, has 20 years of experience in education as a teacher, administrator, and professional development specialist. He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in Rhetoric, Composition and Research Methodology at San Diego State University, Colorado State University, and the University of Redlands.

Jane Cullina, MSEd, is the professional development manager for School Library Connection and ABC-CLIO. A former children's librarian and humanities teacher, Jane earned her master's degree from the Bank Street College of Education in New York City and has taught in Boston, New York, Maine, California, and South Africa.

MLA Citation

"Soft Skills for School Librarians. Customer Service [2:51]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, April 2019, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2194642?learningModuleId=2194635&topicCenterId=0.

View all citation styles

https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2194642?learningModuleId=2194635&topicCenterId=0

Entry ID: 2194642