Target Audience: Law librarians in any setting who would like to take their already excellent customer service skills to the next level
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will be able to describe the Zingermans' customer service principles and apply them to their own library setting.
2. Participants will be able to describe concrete examples of teaching, defining, living, measuring, and rewarding excellent customer service.
This program will challenge law librarians to create a vision of their own library’s ideal customer service experience using the principles of a unique organization: Zingerman’s Delicatessen of Ann Arbor. Named the “Coolest Small Business in America” by INC magazine, Zingerman’s is so renowned for its customer-centric culture that it created a separate training company just to meet the information requests of other organizations. The Zingerman’s customer service model, which includes the organizational credos of “fairness is on another planet” and “breaking the rules,” has been adopted by a small number of public libraries across the United States. This program, led by a library director and customer service trainer, will feature how a large public law library staff has adapted Zingerman’s principles to create a culture that makes it easy to provide excellent customer service to all of its patrons, including each other.