In the age of customer expectations, convenience rules. Short on time, too busy to learn something new, focused more on the surface than the complexity lying below it, the contemporary consumer – and our typical library community members – demonstrate their preference for convenience. Many library services and resources are a poor fit for convenience seekers. That’s probably why we are irritated when we hear someone say or write something along the lines of “Convenience trumps quality everytime”. In a nutshell, that means your typical student will prefer Google or Wikepedia over the higher quality library database every time they can make that choice. The knock against libraries is that they are not convenient to use. We often are uncertain as to what that even means. Is that a comparison between using Google and an Ebscohost or Proquest database? Does it suggest that finding a book with an LC call number is inconvenient? Is there always a line at the circulation desk?

Without a better understanding of what exactly makes the library inconvenient, it is much harder to determine what would improve the convenience. You might argue that if libraries lack convenience that’s just too bad. Conducting good research is slightly different from buying Twinkies and a Pepsi at the Kwiki-Mart. But if convenience is a motivating factor in encouraging individuals to use a service or resource, how do we balance that with the library’s inherent inconvenience – or are there things we can do to improve its convenience factor?

We could probably start with a better understanding of the science of convenience. What does it mean to actually offer a convenient service? You can probably blame this whole focus on convenience on Joe Thompson. I discovered the following item about Thompson in a great article about the convenience factor over at UX Matters:

In 1927, an entrepreneurial worker at the Southland Ice Company in Dallas, Texas began selling milk, bread, and eggs from a storefront on the ice dock to make a little extra money. Having access to an inexhaustible amount of ice for preserving the groceries, Joe Thompson was able to sell when other local grocery stores were closed in the late evenings and on weekends. For the first time, the local community could shop outside of typical business hours, whenever it suited them. Soon after, Joe added gasoline and various other food, drinks, and “convenience” items to his inventory in a new store with the unprecedented trading hours of 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. By 2011, 7-Eleven has grown to 41,000 locations worldwide and is the prototype for convenience.

Ari Weissman’s essay, “Convenience: The Third Essential of a Customer-Centric Business” is the third installment of a seven-part series (not yet complete) on being more customer-centric. It really helps me to get a better grasp of the components of a convenient experience. He makes a good point that convenience changes as an individual’s situation changes. A college professor in her sixties may believe that the 21st-century library is far more convenient than the one she used during graduate school – just think of all the research resources that can be tapped without leaving the office. A freshman in 2012 may find it terribly inconvenient to walk to the third floor of the library to retrieve a book when there’s so much full-text content on the web. Unfortunately, giving every freshman the “when I was your age I had use a print card catalog” lecture is a bad idea. What can we do to improve the convenience factor? I’ll share Weissman’s four components of convenience and put them into the context of a library environment.

Actual Convenience

This gets to the heart of what it means to offer convenience. According to Weissman it is simply the “reduction of physical effort for undesirable tasks” in a way that saves time. I used to go to the physical bank to complete a form to transfer funds from one account to another – but only when the bank was open. Then I could perform that function at an ATM at my convenience anytime. Now I can complete a transfer in less than two minutes while sitting at my computer. It’s hard to imagine it could get anymore convenient – and still be doing it myself. The library is similar. What once could only be done at the physical library can now be accomplished from the desktop – even engaging a librarian for assistance, renewing your books or requesting an interlibrary loan. What’s not convenient? Some of our routines could still be described as requiring too much mental effort. That’s where perception is important

Perception

Simplicity facilitates convenience. Complexity kills it. You know how to intuitively operate that ATM. If you went car shopping, you would cross off your list the one with completely different controls positioned in unexpected places. That’s because your perception of what that experience should be determines your expectations. Convenience is determined by perceptions, and when the actual experience is more difficult than what it was expected to be the result is inconvenience. That’s a perfect way to explain the challenges presented by most library search systems. If you were expecting a Google experience, and then you are presented with the Ebscohost interface it’s going to effect your perception of convenience. That’s why more Google-like discovery search systems will ultimately deliver that perception of convenience – at least until the user gets to the results screen or tries to get to some full-text articles.

Flow

One factor that makes convenience stores convenient are the multiple things you can fold into one visit. Perhaps you stopped in for gas, then you grab a cup of coffee, maybe the newspaper. While completing a primary task (the gas) the consumer is able to take care of a secondary task (grabbing some coffee). Flow is design based on the community members’ behaviors, habits and rituals. Joe Thompson knew that people wanted a simple way to buy milk, bread and eggs late at night. Librarians get this. Consider co-located services in academic libraries. Students can get research help while they wait to see a writing specialist. The library is a place to pick up a video while returning a book. I enjoy showing students a quick two-step technique that immediately adds secondary databases to their primary choice – think of the time that saves over searching them individually. That’s not to say we couldn’t create an even better flow. It reinforces what we already know about the importance of studying our user community members to better understand how we could blend their primary tasks with more secondary tasks.

Control

This is exactly what it suggests – giving the community member greater control over the outcome of their experience. This often applies to self-service where the member takes control over a process. What’s ironic is that it offers the perception of convenience because one is in control of the situation – for example checking out one’s book instead of waiting in line at a desk – but it actually adds to the individual’s workload. Think of it as a trade-off between putting your fate into some one else’s hands and taking responsibility for it yourself. The library community members demonstrated this 25 years ago when they clearly showed their preference for end-user online searching over librarian-mediate searching. Instead of having an expert do the search, the members preferred to take it into their own hands – and if asked they’d say their search skills were far better than the librarian’s. We have to keep looking for ways to empower our users and give them more control.

I never really liked the phrase “convenience trumps quality every time” for the same reason I get annoyed by other platitudes. They may sound good, but they’re just too simplistic and they fail to capture the nuances of the library environment. Weissman shows us there is much more to convenience than just making it easy to get something you want. He writes:

Achieving convenience lies not just in reducing the barriers to the service, but in raising its inherent value. Ultimately, our goal is to create something that is not just sufficient, but excellent; not just easy, but desirable; not just successful, but delightful.

With the proper understanding of the science of convenience we can design experiences based on an understanding of community members’ needs and behaviors. It should be possible to make quality more convenient. Using libraries and conducting research should be more than a choice between low quality and high quality.

Some bad news came for two large retailers at the end of 2011. Sears Holding Corporation, the parent of Sears and K-Mart, announced that it would close 100-120 stores across the United States. With some 4,000 outlets, this amounts to just a small percentage of the total stores. Unlike most of our libraries, retail stores will close if they fail to attract enough customers. As the Sears/K-Mart example demonstrates, even those identified as “marginal performers” will be targeted for closure. Marginal isn’t good enough in the retail industry. Whether it was owing to the bad economy, too much competition, poor selection and service at those stores or other factors, it is tough to survive in retail.

That’s why retailers are often at the forefront of innovation in finding better ways to attract and delight customers. The retail industry was a source of innovation for Commerce Bank (mentioned in the prior DBL post), leading to new services in the banking industry, such as being open 7 days a week and introducing other customer conveniences. While libraries are not subject to the same constraints as retail stores, they can emulate Commerce Bank by following developments in the retail industry. I recently came across several articles of interest that could yield new ideas for libraries that want to offer a better user experience.

For starters you could explore some of the trends sighted in the retail sector that reflect new ideas in attracting customers and giving them a better experience in the store. In the article “Brand New World” Martin Pedersen shares a number of trends he spotted. In major cities the pop-up trend is catching on among restaurants, but now established retailers are giving it a try. Using the cosmetics firm Aesop as an example, Pedersen shows how retailers can get beyond the same look as every other store in the mall. Consider that counters are composed of old newspapers stacked upon one another. Aesop’s president said that “People want to be stimulated visually and intellectually, and our signature stores offer an element of surprise and discovery.” As always, try to be different, and retail may provide some clues on how to do just that. Department stores are innovating by making every level a different experience, not merely two floors for women, a floor for men, another for housewares, etc. A multi-level library might feature one floor as the technology experience with hi-tech everything, while the next level might be the no distractions zone (no cell signals, no wireless, no computers). Take a look, and read more about “secret locations”, another intriguing idea.

While it’s fun to find out what’s happening on the physical side of retail, exploring the latest strategies for reaching the customer is a fine complement. Some contemporary strategies, such as expanding into China, won’t hold much promise for libraries (although reaching out into new territory within your community is always a potential growth strategy), but the post “New Retail Strategies: Offering a Better Fit for Today’s Careful Consumers” offers ideas librarians might want to consider. Wharton marketing professor Jerry Wind summed up the most important retail strategies right now: create excitement; tap into social networks; allow individuals to customize their own product;empower customers to influence the product producer. Consumer behavior is being permanently changed by online retailing. They expect to have great control over the process, from having wide selection, to competitive pricing, to getting reviews from the crowd. How do librarians offer a competing experience, or at least one that meets the basic expectations? The key strategy for the retailers is to try to stay connected to the customer as much as possible. That may explain those daily email announcements from all the online retailers with whom you’ve done business. The key strategy is to understand the customers and offer them a service operation that meets or exceeds their expectations.

If you wanted to learn how cool retail works, you’d go to an Apple Store. If you wanted to understand the thinking behind the Apple Store you’d go to the guy that made it what it is. “Retail Isn’t Broken: Stores Are” is an interview with Ron Johnson, who designed the Apple Stores, and here he provides the Harvard Business Review with an inside look at the Apple Store concept and his plans for transforming J.C. Penney department stores into a solid competitor for the consumer dollar. The big takeaway for me is Johnson’s recognition that those who serve the public need to be about more than mere transactions:

A store has got to be much more than a place to acquire merchandise. It’s got to help people enrich their lives. If the store just fulfills a specific product need, it’s not creating new types of value for the consumer. It’s transacting. Any website can do that. But if a store can help shoppers find outfits that make them feel better about themselves, for instance, or introduce them to a new device that can change the way they communicate, the store is adding value beyond simply providing merchandise. The stores that can do that will take the lead.

Replace “store” with “library” and “merchandise” with “content”, and you get a better picture of what Johnson tried to do at Apple. It’s all about creating value beyond the transaction. He says “the Apple Store succeeded not because we tweaked the traditional model. We reimagined everything.” He goes on to provide examples of how Apple Stores provide that value. There’s much more here that will inspire you to take a closer look at what Johnson is up to at J.C. Penney, and when you do you’ll see he’s a big believer in the power of building relationships, being a differentiator and and leading the customer.

Examples of good experiences and models for innovative service delivery will be found in a variety of industries, but these three articles demonstrate that librarians have much to learn from the world of retail. I’ll leave you with a suggestion to check out this slideshow to see more examples of how retailers are taking new approaches to reinvent how they connect with their customers. The rest is up to us.

One of my job responsibilities at the Temple University Libraries is to serve as the official complaint department. That’s right. The complaints and suggestions are funneled to me. I investigate each one personally or will assign a staff member to look into it. We explore what went wrong and then work to resolve the problem or at least acknowledge it and explain the issues – and when appropriate acknowledge where we failed and what we will do to improve.

Of course, at one time or another most every library worker who connects with members of the user community will hear complaints. It may just be about the lack of paper towel in the bathroom, an improperly imposed fine or the lack of open computers. Many of these complaints are resolved on the spot, or staff will do their best to avoid having a minor problem become a major issue. I always encourage my front line colleagues to refer any one with a complaint to me. I enjoy the challenge of turning a community member from someone who is angry at us into someone who becomes an advocate for us.

By advocate I mean a person who will actually promote the library in the community. We can do all the marketing and promotion we desire, but there’s nothing quite like building a base of loyal advocates who will be energized enough to tell their friends, colleagues and others how great the library is and what it has to offer that can’t be had elsewhere. How about when the library experience we deliver is mostly negative? What do we create when we fail to deal effectively with complaints? Badvocates – that’s the opposite of an advocate. A badvocate may be a chronic complainer who has nothing good to say about the library, but more likely the badvocate is a community member who just had a bad library experience that’s going unresolved. The problem is that the badvocate goes out of their way to spread negativity about the library to the rest of the community or beyond. We all know that members of the user community are much more likely to complain than praise, so it demands extra effort to avoid bad experiences – and we must respond quickly because the word can be spread rapidly via social media.

I first encountered the term “badvocate” in this Mashable post titled “Deal with Negative Online Sentiment About Your Brand” and it immediately resonated with me. The author, Maria Ogneva is the Head of Community at Yammer, where she is in charge of social media and community programs. She spends a fair amount of time dealing with badvocates and trying to prevent them from rising up. She provides three main causes of badvocacy, and you know they happen in your library:

* Inconsistency across channels and touchpoints – this happens when library users have a great experience with one part of the operation but a far worse one at another service point. For example, receiving great service at the desk, but then getting lost in the stacks and finding no one who can help. Or a staff member confirms by phone that a book is available but when the patron arrives the book is impossible to locate.
* Inconsistency with expectations – you know the feeling; you get information off the library website or from a staff member, and then the reality falls far below what was expected. That leaves community members feeling bitter and hostile.
* A negative relationship with library staff – all it takes is one low-morale, uncaring or angry staff member to create that negative relationship. I recently stayed at a hotel and every single employee went out of their way to build the positive experience. It was refreshing to receive such attention, but I was quite sure it was the result of extensive staff development and designing a consistently great experience that helps to avoid negative relationships.

You probably know who some of your chronic complainers are, and you also monitor various social networks to see what’s being said about your library. What can you do when someone is trashing your library and its brand? Sometimes the immediate reaction in the library is to dump the complainer into a bin we call “difficult patron”, “problem patron” or what a co-worker once call her “MOP File” for “most obnoxious patron”. This always bothered me because even though there are some individuals who you can’t please no matter what you do, the odds are that whatever is causing the complaint is something that’s broken in our operation.

That is why the first response or action, according to Ogneva, is to “understand who your badvocates are, what they are saying and where they are saying it. The process is about listening, much like finding anything using social media”. That’s the first step in the IDEO design thinking process. Before you attempt to solve any problem, first identify what the problem is – and that often happens when you listen to the person complaining about your library. Beyond properly understanding your badvocates and the root causes for their issues, here are some other strategies recommended by Ogneva:

Reach out – Reach out and acknowledge their pain. Most problems get resolved quickly because the person just wanted someone to talk to.
Respect privacy – Know when to take the conversation private. After the initial public tweet, you should reach out in a private channel to really dig in and see if you can make a difference.
Offer an individualized solution – In customer service, there’s no “one size fits all,” because each case is different. Offer an individualized solution, which may require you to work with the right people within your own organization.
Don’t let it stew – Address sources of conflict quickly. Because most people just want to be heard, cared for and helped, the faster you can reach out, the more likely you will prevent the situation from festering.
Never make it personal -If and when conflict escalates, never make it personal. Never attack the person, even if he or she attacks you personally. Keep the conversation focused on the issues.
Take action, close the loop – Communicate back to the customer what has been done, or how soon to expect something to be done.
Never lose your cool – Just like you shouldn’t make things personal, you should never lose your cool. Choose your words wisely.
Watch advocates come to your rescue – If you have done your job cultivating advocacy, in an online conflict, your advocates will come to your rescue.
Treat them equally – Make sure you don’t just help badvocates with high influence scores. Every distressed customer is a potential badvocate.

But why get to the point where you need to utilize these strategies to turn your badvocates into your advocates. The best defense against badovacy is a great library user experience. As Ogneva says, “Just as badvocacy is caused by bad user experience, advocacy is caused by excellent experience.” She goes on to say that “Advocates are created when there is a two-way dialogue around their need, and users have a direct input into the future of the product.” Her final piece of advice for creating advocates is to “humanize the brand.”

This makes excellent sense and reinforces what I’ve said previously about making the library about the people who work there and their relationships with the community. If the public only sees the library as a building with books and a website with links to databases, what’s the harm in telling your network how much you hate it and how badly it sucks; it’s not like anyone is being hurt. If members of the user community have experienced the library as engagement with humans they are less likely to be critical and are more likely to see the library as a place where they can take up their problems with people like themselves.

If you have a story to share about turning one of your badvocates in to an advocate – or other ideas for dealing with badvocates – please share it with a comment.

When I want to share and explain the concepts of design thinking with an audience of librarians I often make use of the video “The Deep Dive.” It was originally an episode of Nightline shown in 1991, and it profiles the firm IDEO. In the program the IDEO folks are charged with redesigning a supermarket shopping cart. Watching the IDEO folks, an eclectic mix of professionals, go through the process illustrates the basic concepts of design thinking in very practical ways. I’ve owned the DVD that I bought from ABC for a few years. But now, thanks to someone who put event online (paying no attention to the FBI warnings about copying the video) you can watch the entire Deep Dive on YouTube. If you haven’t seen it, spend 22 minutes watching it (in three parts) before it is taken down.

IDEO is a firm highly associated with design thinking, but there are other design firms that use this technique as well. One is Adaptive Path, and I recommend you follow their blog. A lesser known firm is Maya Design, but they’ve done some interesting work, particularly their re-design of the interior of the Carnegie Public Library. We featured a designer from Maya on a Blended Librarians Online Community webcast a few years ago. I recently noticed an article about Maya Design in the latest issue of Fast Company that discusses their 3-day design boot camps. Seems they are now teaching others to become design thinkers. Sounds like a program I’d really like to attend.

What also caught my attention this past week was the announcement of two UX-related resources in the library community. One of my favorite events at any ALA conference is the Friday afternoon OCLC Symposium. This year the main speaker is Joseph A. Michelli, Ph.D, (The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary) who will “engage the audience in a conversation that explores ways to bring a unique customer experience to the library.” I’m already registered and will hear what Michelli has to say about Starbuck’s recent challenges and the resiliance of the user experience in a recession. But just the fact that OCLC is turning its attention to UX is interesting to me.

I also came across a slideshow from a presentation by John Blyberg, Darien Library’s Assistant Director for Innovation and User Experience, on the topic of user experience design in libraries. If Blyberg is discussing UX in his conference presentations that will help to get more librarians interested in these ideas.

I’m hardly a gastronome. I’ll eat just about anything, and I’m happy with simple foods – anything from mac & cheese from the box to a grilled piece of fish tossed from the skillet to the plate. But at the ALA Midwinter Convention in Denver a vendor invited me to dinner. I could hardly decline the generous offer.

So we trundled off to what I believe is one of Denver’s tonier dining establishments. It was small, crowded and gave the air of exlusivity. Not what I’m used to by any means. Take me to a beer & pizza joint. I didn’t quite know what to expect.

A look at the menu revealed a number of concoctions that left my head spinning. Anything I could have chosen would represent an entirely unfamiliar dining experience. That could be a good or really bad thing. I wasn’t even sure how to start narrowing down the puzzling options. But that’s not what happened.

My hosts decided to opt for the seven-course tasting menu. Now don’t get the wrong impression. It’s seven courses, but the portions are “tasting” size. At first I was thinking how hungry I was going to be after seven courses of tea room size portions. I was pretty hungry after a day of trudging around Denver from meeting to program. Next I was worried about what I was going to get to eat. Turns out the chef just does whatever he or she likes for the tasting menu. – stuff they don’t even advertise on the menu.  How did I get myself into this mess? I said I’ll eat just about anything, but I tend to draw the line on raw foods, super hot surprises and tentacled creatures.

I don’t think I was the only one having doubts. In fact, that was later confirmed at the end of the marathon meal when one of the hosts uttered “I’m wondering if we should have just stuck with the regular menu?” But once we put in the order there was no turning back.

Now unfortunately I have no way of relating to you what I ate. First, after seven dishes in a row you can hardly remember anything. Second, I never saw the names in writing. Third, all I know is that a snooty waiter rattled off the names faster than Google can find a billion hits on Britney Spears. I can tell you that it started with a plate with four different minuscule appetizers. Two of them tasted pretty good. The other two – well to paraphrase the famous words of Homer Simpson – “We shall never speak of those appetizers again”. Did it go downhill from there?

That’s not the important part of this post. Sure, we went through the shellfish, pasta, meat, fish and I-have-absolutely-no-frickin-idea-what-was-on-the-plate-courses, and there was even an interlude for a sake/lime liquid that served as a palate cleanser (actually pretty darn tasty). What is important is how this meal gave me a completely different perspective on the value of design in creating a great user experience.

This was no haphazard, just put something on the plate meal. This was an exquisitely well thought out, well designed and well executed meal. Everything had its place. Everything had to be in the right order. Everything had to have a certain appearance and taste. Here’s the surprise. Not only was I not hungry at the end of it all, but I wasn’t feeling stuffed either. It felt just right. Total satisfaction. And although there were a few things that went in my mouth that just didn’t feel right, the overall impact of the combination of different tastes, textures, colors, and portions resulted in a perfect dining experience.

It was in the cab ride back to the hotels when the question about whether or not the tasting menu was the right choice surfaced. I kept my thoughts to myself. As I walked back to my room I reflected on the experience, and decided that given the choice I’d opt for the seven-course tasting menu again. It gave me some real insight into design and user experience. If you want those you serve to have a great user experience in your library, design thinking needs to happen on the front end. It was clear to me that the chef who thought up that meal had to be very intentional in the food selection and presentation. He or she clearly wanted to differentiate it from the regular menu items.

It certainly would have been easy enough to just drop a smaller portion of each of those regular items onto smaller plates and serve them up. That’s why great user experiences don’t come easy. They require real thought, an appreciation of the consumer, prototyping (I’m sure the chef has to experiment until he or she discovers the best combinations), solid implementation, a crew of staff that completely get the totality of the experience they are delivering (the chef is the chief designer but if the servers don’t get it the whole thing fails) and a total commitment to the consumer having a great all around experience. I learned things of great value thanks to that seven-course meal. All learning experiences should be so tasty.

So I am in debt to my gracious hosts for taking me to that restaurant and introducing me to the seven-course tasking menu. And it’s good to have a story that helps to share what great user experiences are about.