Are we addressing real needs or just offering strawberry frappuccinos? A lesson from Kroger

Yesterday afternoon I went into my local grocery store. I picked up what I needed and moved along to the checkout isle. LONG LINES! They had the self check section, which I like, but most of us had full carts. They only had two lanes open, but each lane had two baggers. Why couldn’t they have cross trained baggers to be cashiers for rush periods?

I could see two other employees messing around with a broken self-serve Georgia Lottery machine... couldn’t they have let that go for a few minutes to open up additional lanes?

I’m sure this happens everyday in every grocery store across the country— but what bothered me is while we were waiting two more employees came out offering strawberry frappuccino samples. Why couldn’t one of them open an additional lane?

Kroger’s priorities didn’t match the customer's need. Each lane was over six customers deep... we all wanted to purchase goods and be on our way, yet their workflow was not designed to be optimized... not build for congestion. Each employee had their role, their task, and even though a bottleneck emerged, employees stayed within the framework.

I felt something similar last summer when we merged our circulation and reference desks during renovations. On the reference side we didn’t have the software or access privileges to the circ client and hence could not check out books or answer patron account questions. We couldn’t address a large portion of actual needs.

Do patrons really need to know about Boolean and Advanced Searching tactics? Do they need to understand and appreciate peer reviewed journals? Do they even need to know how a library catalog works? I'm not against reference or information literacy, but I just feel our approach and rhetoric (as a profession) might be off-message to our users. Very old-world.

Many libraries claim to be user-centered, but when I talk with librarians or read their blog posts or see their flyers and advertising they still seem to be very library-centered, even very reference-centered. We can't seem to move beyond "the term paper" mentality.

I don’t know—still working this one out. But I’m starting to think that all I have to offer are strawberry frappuccinos... and missing out on what my patrons really need.

Note: At ALA, Google was made librarians participate in a 4 question online scavenger hunt in order to earn a Google Pin. How lame is that? Note to all vendors--- ipods and mp3 players are pretty old now--- try and lure us with GPS or iPhones or something cool. Pins? Seriously...

Note 2: Google, please learn who Morrissey is. Gmail has no clue, yet Microsoft Word is down with rock icons.

Comments

[emily]

i feel your pain, big time. our users are plenty savvy enough to realize when strawberry frappuccinos (which sound totally disgusting, btw) are being used as a smoke screen to disguise our inadequacies. yesterday i tried looking up the new york times in our library catalog. holy crap, you totally need a master's degree to find it. and if that isn't enough, the morrissey show i was going to attend tonight has been canceled. to say the least, i'm truly disappointed. truly, truly, truly.

[Brian]

I saw M about 10 years ago and it was very awesome.

[stevenb]

Plunkett Research was doing a drawing for a Magellan GPS unit - I threw my card in there. A drawing for an iPhone? They might as well do one for a bar of gold. I'll do you one better on Google. The whole booth is lame. If you're a librarian in 2007 and you need to watch a presentation on how to use Google Books or Google Scholar - well it can't get much lower than that. Maybe that was remedial librarianship for those who flunked the google quiz - maybe you got your pin after you watched the show. Sometimes it is sad to watch what librarians will do for a vendor treat out on the exhibit floor.

[Walt Lessun]

stevenb said: Sometimes it is sad to watch what librarians will do for a vendor treat out on the exhibit floor.
waltless said: It's even sadder when you stop to consider why we do such things for vendor treats...

[Brian]

“The librarian as information priest is as dead as Elvis,” Needham said.

http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/06/25/games

George Needham is my new hero... he also has great taste in wine.

[fleury]

Even sadder than watching librarians taking advantage of vendor freebies: sitting in presentations with librarian cell phones going off, one after another. Is it too "Old World" to expect that, of all people, librarians would understand the common courtesy of setting the darned things to vibe?

Getting back to the subject of priorities...yes, absolutely agreed. Taking care of immediate patron needs is so much more important than (to give a random example) expending staff time in messing around with Photoshop to create "edgy" photos for the new library website. That can wait...the patrons, not so much.

[Lucas]

Perhaps, the grocery store has you waiting in line for a reason, to sell you more products... all of the little goodies hanging around the end of the isle, the strawberry fraps, etc. It is all marketing. Something that libraries need more of. It is not all about what the customer wants, but what we can make the customer want. User centered is not an excuse to drop all of the structure of a library. Libraries need to be aware of user needs, but also need to provide services that the user may not be aware of when they initally walk through the door, hence info lit, guided use of databases , etc

[Karen]

Brian,
I find this entry particularly interesting, specifically because it involves a subject that I am so passionate about: Circulation.

Before we merged with your department last summer, I was convinced that we were going to “prove our worth” and show everyone how hard we work and how we do everything we can to meet the need of the patron. It turned out that we did not need to “prove our worth” because our worth is apparent in the number of transactions we do a day. It was actually Reference who was feeling they had something to prove and I often saw how frustrated librarians became when there were lines of students for circulation and 2 extra sets of hands not doing anything to help. I think this just shows that a philosophical change is needed. Librarians need to start wanting the skills necessary to meet all of the needs of the patron.

While circulation is often looked down upon by many librarians (just a generalization from my own library experience), it is becoming increasingly important for those librarians to attain circulation skills that will benefit the patron. It takes months and months of training to become great in Circulation and reach the level of customer service that we require. Often our services require much more than just checking in and out books and looking at someone’s account. Most inquiries require deep investigation into accounts and problem solving to satisfy the needs of the customer. If we’d had the opportunity (and the volunteers) to train reference staff for a few months before merging, I think the experience would have been enlightening for everyone involved and I don’t think anyone would have felt useless or like a strawberry frappuccino pusher. Unfortunately, I have not had any librarians interested in training on the Circ desk, although we have extended many invitations. We sure could use the help. I would be interested in your reason for this but my own theory is that in order to work in circulation you have to lose much of your independence. You have to ask questions and collaborate, and ultimately, you have to follow a strict set of rules, which means saying the word “no” quite often. In some way, I believe this is frightening to librarians. Particularly, taking instruction and being under the guidance of non-librarians. I think it all boils down to ego. Really, we need to put aside our egos to help the customer. Afterall, we are all just librarians to them.

So come on, jump in that checkout line. You won't regret it.

Sorry for such a long reply. I am very passionate about this. However, I do feel that traditional reference is still very important and am in no way trying to belittle the work done in the reference department. Just saying that it could be enhanced.

[JB]

This posting casts the grocery store employees (and, by analogy, librarians) in a decidedly negative light. However, there is sense in which the grocery store employees may be presenting us with a positive example. Consider this. The grocery store employees could have given you what you wanted. They could have opened more lines and moved people along faster. They didn’t do that because they recognized that you and the other customers were all trapped, in a manner of speaking. By the time you had entered the line, you had invested enough energy in your shopping trip that you were willing to stay put for a while. Thus, the employees used that opportunity to market a new product. It may have annoyed you, but it worked. You not only noticed the product, you wrote about it on your blog, and now I’m going to go out and get one. How can we do that type of the thing in the library?

[Brian]

I hate everything coffee related - so their "offer" turned me against them.

While I like the layout, selection and 24 hours of this particular store, they regularly have long lines and a bag-it-yourself service... that's fine, but don't say you are devoted to the customer experience or customers come first or making shopping easier or whatever lame slogan they want to push if your intention is to trap customers so you can sell them crap they don’t want.

Also, put coupons on my Kroger card-- instead of lame paper sheets-- give me digital coupons for the stuff I regularly purchase.

[Jeff]

I completely agree with Karen's statements. Personnel often get so compartmentalized we cannot really serve the patron. "I cannot check out to you, I am only here for reference." "I can answer that, you will have to talk to the reference librarian." Much of that starts from up top. What would you think if your supervisor, manager, or director worked circulation successfully. How would that make you feel?

[Emily]

It's just as bad at public libraries. If someone wants to print something for the first time the system is so confusing that they basically have to talk to a reference librarian, go down to circulation to pay, and then come back upstairs to talk to us again in order to figure out how the stupid thing works. And of course after all that if the printer breaks (spontaneously and regularly)they will then have to speak to someone in the computer department because we can't fix it. I always start off apologizing if someone wants to print...

I will admit to being stupidly enticed by the admittedly scary google-colored fortune cookies. But I turn up my nose at scavenger hunts. I did ask a Googleite if there was anything new and interesting he could show me on the site and he basically tried to walk me through the regular search engine. Ridiculous. Why not point out interesting developments at a conference like that? We already know what you've got out, so show us what's coming!

[Emily]

It's just as bad at public libraries. If someone wants to print something for the first time the system is so confusing that they basically have to talk to a reference librarian, go down to circulation to pay, and then come back upstairs to talk to us again in order to figure out how the stupid thing works. And of course after all that if the printer breaks (spontaneously and regularly)they will then have to speak to someone in the computer department because we can't fix it. I always start off apologizing if someone wants to print...

I will admit to being stupidly enticed by the admittedly scary google-colored fortune cookies. But I turn up my nose at scavenger hunts. I did ask a Googleite if there was anything new and interesting he could show me on the site and he basically tried to walk me through the regular search engine. Ridiculous. Why not point out interesting developments at a conference like that? We already know what you've got out, so show us what's coming!

[Patricia Thompson]

The reason the baggers don't check out is because checkers are trained more and get paid more than baggers. Checkers can bag, but baggers can't usually check. And the employees who came out with the frap samples were probably not checkers either. They probably came in to work that day just to prepare the samples and pass them out. Heck, they might even be temps. Maybe they work in the deli.

It probably costs a lot of money to hire checkers to stand around if there aren't enough customers. Or maybe a checker called in sick. The manager usually is the one who opens up another line when needed. Maybe he/she was on the phone with a supplier or had to go to the bathroom. Unlike a library, the store doesn't keep going if it doesn't make a profit. I'm just pointing out how it's not as simple as you might think.

[Brian]

Patricia Thompson -- that is exactly the problem. We have our roles and that's all we do-- the old "it's not my job"--- so during finals when circ is flooded with book returns and students don't need reference desk help, I'm just supposed to sit there-- when it would benefit the org better if I helped discharge, sort, and shelve books.

[Patricia Thompson]

I agree. I said that checkers can bag, but baggers can't check. You said that there were too many baggers and not enough checkers. I agree that Ref librarians can check out books, and ours do that all the time. They do not just sit there when things are busy. It's harder for a Circ assistant to answer certain questions when there are no Ref. Librarians around, and also, they do not get paid as much as a Ref librarian so it's not fair to expect them to know as much. So what I'm getting at is that you have more flexibility in staffing in one direction than in the other.