Hyper-responsive Service
A colleague on the discussion list for solo librarians broached hyper-responsive service after readling the article “People Like People Who Are Responsive” in the November 8 Zweig Letter about how places offering fast response times (2-10 minutes) often have an advantage over their competitors. She mentioned that her responsiveness–even if it’s just letting a customer know she’s received the inquiry–may have saved her job from being outsourced.
Another colleague warned about the sacrifice of accuracy over speed. He also mentioned that it might be better service to forego the acknowledgement to spend the time instead on actually fulfilling the request.
“[A] SOLID MAJORITY OF YOU WILL NOT DO THIS ONE THING THAT IS TOTALLY WITHIN YOUR CONTROL: BE RESPONSIVE!” professes Mark Zweig (emphasis his) “[T]he impression of caring and good service is just too valuable to waste by being slow on your feet.”
Hyper-responsiveness is almost a requirement in the fast paced, deadline driven environments of news organizations. Can we do more with it?
December 8th, 2004 at 9:03 am
I tend toward the hyper-responsive but I really think it’s key to not forget to do a real reference interview… you know, open questions, probing questions, rephrasing the question/confirming, answering, then following-up (was this what you were looking for, have I answered your question?). Sometimes I think librarians are trying so hard to be quick that they jump to conclusions about what the customer wants — they’re already thinking up the search strategy when they should be listening.
December 8th, 2004 at 11:19 am
That’s a good point, Christina. Conducting a proper reference interview came up as part of yesterday’s discussion, too. Some librarians use the acknowledgement of receiving a request as an opportunity to do that.