The Church of the Customer Blog (a wonderful blog for anyone interested in excellent customer service) had a post today on how to create a Word-of-Mouth Worthy airline.  The example given was of a pilot who has taken it upon himself to create a wonderful experience for his passengers.  The article lists the many things he does that are not part of the company’s policy:

• He mingles with passengers in the gate area
• He makes gate announcements himself, updating passengers about weather conditions and sets realistic expectations for delays
• He uses his cellphone to call United operations to ask about connections for passengers
• He passes out information cards to passengers with fun facts about
  the plane; he signs two of them, whose owners will win a bottle of wine
• He snaps pictures of animals in the cargo hold to show owners their pets are safely on board
• He writes notes to first-class passengers and elite frequent fliers
  on the back of his business cards, addressing them by name and thanking
  them for their business
• He personally calls parents of unaccompanied children to give them updates
• He instructs flight attendants to pass out napkins asking passengers to write notes about experiences on United, good or bad
• He orders 200 McDonald’s hamburgers for passengers if his flight is delayed or diverted

It got me thinking about what we library directors should be doing.  What can we do in addition to being administrators that would immediately improve our patrons’ experience at the library?  What I loved about the pilot was that he didn’t set up formal listening sessions, but rather grabbed his customers right where they were and exceeded their expectations. 

Here are some things I would love to do and see:

• Directors should work the service desks at their libraries.  Do you know the feel and service your patrons are receiving?  (I am posting this from our library’s reference desk while the staff has a department meeting, so this is one I personally do whenever I get the chance.)  I find that I get a real sense of our patrons, their needs and how the library inter-relates when I do even a short stint at desk.
• Directors should have blogs, newsletters and other ways to talk directly to their patrons.  Even more so, the patrons should have the ability to talk directly to the director and be heard.  This can happen on the fly in the library itself, with listening sessions, or online.
• Directors should write thank you notes themselves for donations.  That personal touch goes a long way.
• Directors should not be dictators.  We should listen, listen, listen and trust our staffs.  I learn more from my staff and their knowledge of the community and libraries than anywhere else. 
• Directors should be willing to take risks.  Allow changes to happen.  Lead the way to new services.  Be brave!

What else would you love to see your administrator doing?  What do you do as an administrator to better serve your patrons?

The Great Lakes Wiki offers a place for people who love the Great Lakes and want to help tell their story.  You can read about the culture of the lakes, recreation, commerce, geography, ecology, and the areas of concern.  There is also a special area for Citizen Reports, to encourage more people to participate. 

Medicare has a very nice website that compares nursing homes.  You can search by state, county, city, zip code, or name.  The information will have whether they participate in Medicare, the date they were initially certified, whether they participate in Medicaid, the total number of beds, type of ownership (nonprofit or profit), whether it is part of a hospital, and much more. 

TasteSpotting is an eye-popping food resource.  It offers links to some of the top food blogs online, each accompanied with a mouth-watering photograph.  If you are a foodie or someone who just enjoys drooling on your keyboard, this is the site for you.

Snooth is a site that offers you personalized wine recommendations.  You rank the wines you like and dislike, and just like Netflix, you will get personalized recommendations of new wines you will enjoy.  Also, you can do a keyword search without registering and find wines that way.  Any search can be refined by setting the amount you want to spend, the vintage, the type of wine, region, and varietal.  This will lead you to individual wines, each with a Snoothrank that shows how others have rated it and comments about the wine.  Very 2.0 and a very nice site to demo the concepts of 2.0 to patrons because they are put in terms that are not geeky or technology oriented.

Here’s a sad one for your library website.  An Associated Press-Ipsos poll shows that one in four adults in America didn’t read any books last year.  None. 

But you want to put a twist on it on your site.  I’d mention circulation rates in your community per capita, congratulating your community for being such great readers.  Something like that.

Otherwise the cynic in me says that we can’t expect children in our society to value reading if the adults in their lives don’t. 

Just what I needed!  Our library has quite a large collection of links on Del.icio.us, which I have been worried about doing link checking on.  But never fear!  Here comes Fresh Del.icio.us, a link checker specifically for Del.icio.us. 

Remember, just like any link checker, you don’t want to start this in the last few minutes of your workday.  It will need some time to check through your links.  The more links, the more time.  I start them early in the day, forget about them and then am pleasantly surprised that they are finished in the last few minutes of my day.

GolfLink is a site that combines golfing and social networking.  Here you will find tips and videos and information on golf courses.  But you will also find an active online community, the opportunity to start a golfing blog, the ability to rate courses you have played, and a place to store and compare your game stats. 

Classic Cat is a site that offers free classical music available for download.  They have over 2800 performances in mp3 format.  Their collection can be browsed by composer, performer, instruments, genre or the top 100. 

TripIt is a fascinating service that I haven’t seen duplicated anywhere else.  First, you email them your flight, hotel and rental car information.  Then they automatically add maps, weather information, and directions.  You end up with a printable itinerary with all of the information in one place.