Saying what we will do, and doing what we say: Implementing a customer service plan

Journal of Academic Librarianship

Volumn 22, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 173-180

  Wehmeyer, Susan ^a   Auchter, Dorothy ^a   Hirshon, Arnold ^b  

^a WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b LEHIGH UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0030496745     PISSN: 00991333     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/S0099-1333(96)90055-5     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. 1. E. Patricia Birsner & Ronald D. Balsley, Practical Guide to Customer Service Management and Operations (New York: AMACOM, 1982), p. 173.
2. 2. Karl Albrecht, At America's Service (Homewood: Dow Jones-Irwin, 1988), p. 20.
3. 3. John Tschohl, Achieving Excellence Through Customer Service (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1991), pp. 34-38.
4. 4. Warren Blanding, Customer Service Operations (New York: AMACOM, 1991), p. 32.
5. 5. Birsner & Balsley, Practical Guide; Martin Christopher, The Customer Service Planner (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1992).
6. 5. Birsner & Balsley, Practical Guide; Martin Christopher, The Customer Service Planner (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1992).
7. 6. Albrecht, At America's Service, pp. 105-109.
8. 7. Ibid., pp. 131-142.
9. 8. Birsner & Balsley, Practical Guide, p. 154.
10. 9. National Performance Review, Standards for Serving the American People (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1994), p. 2.
11. 10. Posted request for information from libraries that had either published a public customer service pledge, or were in the process of writing one to PACS-L, LIBADMIN, LIBREF, and MEDLIB-L listservs on August 16, 1995.
12. 11. Suzanne Walters, Customer Service: A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians (New York: Neal-Schuman, 1994).
13. 12. Ibid., p. 19.
14. 13. Guy St. Clair, Customer Service In the Information Environment (London: Bowker-Saur, 1993), pp. 104-117.
15. 14. St. Clair, Customer Service, pp. 54-57.
16. 15. Tschohl, Achieving Excellence, p. 36.
17. 16. Albrecht, At America's Service, p. 162.
18. 17. James Champy, Reengineering Management: the Mandate for New Leadership (New York: HarperBusiness, 1995).
19. 18. Ibid., p. 136.
20. 19. Joel Arthur Barker, Future Edge: Discovering the New Paradigms of Success (New York: William Morrow, 1992), pp. 15-17.
21. 20. More recently, the articulation of standard service levels was discussed very briefly within the context of training, but not as part of a customer service plan, in Julie Brewer, "Service Management: How to Plan for It Rather than Hope for It," Library Administration and Mangement (Fall 1995), pp. 207-210. At page 209, Brewer observes that "Effective training begins with established service level agreements. Specific examples include the number of rings allowed in answering telephones or the level of instruction provided at the information desk before making referrals." While Brewer states that "[s]ervice standards need to be published and communicated throughout the organization," we could find no examples of published statements by an academic library other than the one described in this article. In an electronic mail correspondence with Brewer (December 14, 1995), she could provide no examples from academic libraries.