Guest Experiences- Where we are at in Public Services

We wanted to formally announce that Bethany was the library location selected to be the pilot library of Guest Experiences. Bethany was chosen to start this process first for several reasons. These include that they are in a newer building and therefore guests and staff are learning to interact in a different way than they previously did and that their actions have indicated that they have a strong desire to go in the Guest Experiences direction.

At this point we have had preliminary meetings to start the discussion about what we will be doing to get this started at Bethany and to talk about what training will look like. The meetings at Bethany, up to this point, have included Chris Kennedy, LaVetta Dent, Rondia Banks, Edie Daniel, Jared Johnson, Emma Carley, Milissa Copeland and Erin Bedford. The training meetings have included Chris Kennedy, LaVetta Dent, Milissa Copeland, Kelley Hoffman and Erin Bedford. Larry White has also been involved in meetings and shared his vision with the Public Services Managers, Leadership Team, and the Executive Committee of the Commission.

Our goal with Guest Experiences is to strengthen the ties that we already have with our communities and to help create new relationships within our communities. Creating experiences that connect with the community will help facilitate lasting relationships that benefit the guest as well as the library. We will be providing a framework of what this looks like but there is latitude in how we achieve this at each location. We anticipate that each location will be different, and the local staff will be a part of that process. We expect that we will try things and they may not give us the results that we would like, which means that we will simply make changes to the process to see if we can get the results that we are hoping for. There is the possibility of changing job descriptions and/or titles. If that occurs, we will be having conversations with the affected staff members.

A Guest Experience type model has proven success in the retail world as well as in library world.  Here is a link to a podcast by Dr. Steve Albrecht on Library 2.0 that is titled ‘Service: The Walt Disney Way’ that makes some connections to the library world (it’s about 30 minutes), thank you to Edie Daniel for sharing the podcast with us. The Guest Experience model is simply retraining our minds to look at how we provide service, thinking in a different way and changing our actions to match.

Our current timeline has Bethany starting Guest Experiences by July 1st. We will evaluate around 3 months into the process to see where we are at and if any changes need to be made. Approximately 3 to 6 months after Bethany has begun, we will begin with the next location.

Our current training plan includes 3 formal workshops with Learning and Development and the Bethany staff. They are ‘Personas’, ‘Journey Mapping’ and ‘Principles, Expectations and Practice’. There will be prework for the staff to complete and then an in-person training session for each of these workshops. The Bethany staff will be split into 2 groups to facilitate attendance at the trainings and each group will work through the 3 workshops. Our goal is that these trainings will help staff think about guests in a different way and start the process of determining how they will be changing their workflow/customer service to fit into Guest Experiences. We anticipate that we will also incorporate team building exercises into activities with the Bethany staff and that Rondia will connect Summer Reading with Guest Experiences for the Bethany staff. There will be follow-up evaluation questions provided to the Bethany staff to help us determine if changes need to be made to the training prior to starting with the next location.

When we transition to the next location, our current plan is to have a staff swap so that staff from the next location will visit Bethany and vice versa. This will allow discussion about how it’s worked and what things have been tested at Bethany and allow the next location’s staff to see it in practice.

We will post regular updates so that everyone will have the opportunity to see how we are progressing as we start with transitioning to the Guest Experiences. Erin Bedford is recording our progress as part of the implementation plan to document our plans, successes, and revisions as we learn along the way.