Matthew Foster

9/28/2012
Customer Service Evaluation
I chose to compare my local library to my place of employment, Barnes and Noble, both
because I already spend a great deal of time at both sites, and because I have knowledge about the
training and policies at both establishments that I believe give me insights I might otherwise have
missed. I spent a half hour at the library observing the reference librarians and an hour before my shift
at Barnes and Noble observing booksellers. Both the reference librarians and the booksellers aided their
patrons/customers, and all the interactions appeared to end positively. In my opinion, the booksellers
seemed much more friendly and eager to aid the customers than the reference librarians.
While at the library, the reference librarians remained at the desk while resolving reference
questions except for one instance when one left to aid a patron with a computer issue. They were all
very pleasant, and kept a cheerful demeanor and greeted all patrons who approached the desk with a
smile, though none left the desk to actively search for patrons who needed help. Each of the three
participated in at least one reference transaction while I was observing, but after their patrons left, they
each appeared as though they were glad to be able to get back to their work. One patron was looking
for information for a school project on the holocaust, and the librarian directed him to the history
section, suggesting two specific titles which other patrons had used for similar projects. One patron was
looking for information about traveling to Japan, and the librarian directed him to the travel section,
telling him where Japan was approximately on the shelves. The final patron I was able to observe
directly had a question about how to access a particular website on the computer, and the librarian went
to the computer with her to show her what to do.
Based on Mulac's elements of a reference interview, approachability, interest,
listening/inquiring, searching, and follow-up (Mulac, 2012, p 58-59), the librarians were mostly
successful. They were approachable because they were in a centralized location in the library near the

computers and easily visible from nearly all the nonfiction shelves. They sat at a desk with a
REFERENCE sign hanging over the top, and all wore pleasant, friendly smiles. During each
transaction, they demonstrated interest by continued eye contact, and keeping a positive inflection to
their tone. I saw a potential lack in the librarians' work in the listening and inquiring section. Because
the questions were fairly common types of requests (many students do papers on the holocaust, and
inquiring about travel to a different country is also fairly common), the librarians did not ask questions
to interpret the patrons' needs. They answered the question the patron specifically asked rather than ask
in-depth questions to determine exactly what the patron was looking for. The searching step was
accomplished quickly, as the librarians had experience in locating resources about the specific topics,
but there was no discussion of how the librarian arrived at the recommendation, nor of how the patron
could replicate such a search on their own. This is not ideal treatment and is even severely lacking as
compared with the instruction by Dave Harmeyer in his article where he describes both how to perform
the specific search the student is doing as well as how she could use the techniques to perform further
searches on her own (Harmeyer, 2010). The element that two of the librarians skipped was that of
follow-up. Neither librarian made any effort (while I was observing) to confirm the information was
relevant or what the patron was looking for. The third librarian (with the computer question) remained
with the patron until her problem was resolved, and confirmed that she had resolved the problem before
he left.
I believe that the librarians did a fairly good job, though their performance was somewhat
lacking in certain elements. One factor I believe had an impact on their performance is that each
librarian had other tasks for which they are responsible in the library. One was busy working on
interlibrary loan forms when approached by a patron. She was attentive to the patron, but had a large
stack of papers to deal with, and appeared relieved when the patron left to find the books. Another
librarian was in the process of selecting items for the collection when she was approached, and seemed
a bit disoriented when she returned to the process after the reference transaction. The third was doing

coursework for a library class when the querent approached him. The lesser importance to his job could
be related to the further effort he put forth to aid the patron. Another factor in their service could have
been their expectations that anyone who had a question would come to the reference desk because of its
signage and centralized location. This coupled with their other duties might help explain why none of
the librarians actively asked if any help was needed. Finally, one factor in their lack of instruction and
follow-up could be due to the numerous other patrons who look for similar information (or at least ask
similar initial questions) who seem happy with a similar level of response, negating the need for further
service. Ultimately, the service provided by the librarians seemed adequate to the questions asked, but
lacking in the full range of service included in the full reference transaction.
At Barnes and Noble, I observed a large number of sales conversations which bear numerous
similarities to a reference transaction. In my post on customer service on the class discussion board, I
examined the similarities between Barnes and Nobles' elements of a bookselling conversation to the
elements of a reference transaction, and that comparison fits very well here. Each of the booksellers I
observed greeted customers with a smile and attentiveness, and some even wandered around the store
looking for customers to aid while going about their other tasks. Most often, the transaction began with
a customer looking for a specific book, and the bookseller searching on the computer for the
appropriate title, and then taking the customer to the book, placing it in their hand and asking if they
needed any further help. This process fits the reference transaction elements better than the ones in the
library. All booksellers wear a name tag and wear clothing up to a business-casual standard to show
their approachability, as well as often greeting customers proactively. The booksellers then demonstrate
interest by setting aside whatever task they were working on to pay attention to the customer's request.
Some booksellers are much better at listening and inquiring than others with some actively determining
for what purpose a customer needs a particular book and others taking the customer to an appropriate
section and suggesting a title or two. Searching is mostly a much simpler task for booksellers because
the product is either in the store or not, and the amount of additional options a bookseller has is

significantly limited compared to a librarian. The follow-up for booksellers is also much simpler
because a customer's success in searching for a particular book is usually very easy to confirm. Is this
the book you were looking for? Yes it is.
While the elements of the reference transaction are all present in most bookselling
conversations, a bookseller's tasks are very specific about where the customer's needs fit into his job.
Training at Barnes and Noble reinforces through all aspects of training that no matter what one is
doing, if a customer needs help, you immediately drop everything to help them. This same behavior is
exhibited in the library, but it did not seem as consistent in their behavior. A large factor in the
difference between the library and the book store is that the customer generally has a much better idea
of what they need. A bookseller is looking for a discrete piece of information, rather than a more
nebulous body of knowledge. When a librarian explores a direction for a line of study, they have a
variety of different services and search methods and resources they can access for an enormous scope
of potential topics. A bookseller has only one resource to access to locate a fairly well-defined piece of
information. This simplifies the searching process immensely for the bookseller, even though they have
less training in searching processes and techniques than a librarian does. In the article by Luo and
Weak, the most frequently asked questions require very specific, disparate kinds of information like if
you put sickerdoodle cookie dough in the fridige for an hr. will that make them soft cookies when u
bake them (Luo & Weak, 2011, p 136) and what is the weather forecast for portland, oregon? (Luo
& Weak, 2011, p 136). Each question is fairly easy to answer with the appropriate search, but each
question has a hugely varied kind of information it is searching for. A bookseller is invariably looking
for a book or a specific kind of item, and can at least narrow down what section they need to find based
on the customer's question. Ultimately, I think the booksellers followed the reference transaction
elements best, but the librarians followed most of the elements, and have a much larger scope of
information they are expected to know or be able to find out, as well as a much larger span of
responsibility which can be distracting to the goal of helping patrons connect with information.

Bibliography
Harmeyer, D. (2010). Hybrid Reference: Blending the Reference Interview and Information Literacy.
The Reference Librarian, 51(4), 358362. doi:10.1080/02763877.2010.503316
Luo, L., & Weak, E. (2011). Texting 4 Answers. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 51(2), 4352.
Retrieved from http://rusa.metapress.com/index/G882W741M36V2644.pdf
Mulac, C. (2012). Fundamentals of Reference. Chicago, IL: American Library Association.