5.1.2 We set comprehensive standards for all aspects of the quality of customer service to be expected in all dealings with our organisation.

Our Customer Care Statement promotes the quality of service our customers can expect.  We deliver initial customer care training to all new staff via the Welcome Host course (Doc A) to ensure a thorough understanding of these expectations.  We have worked with all frontline staff to develop a best practice document for everybody working on a service desk.  This document has been publicised to existing staff and will be used for induction training with new staff 

All staff who work on Library Help are provided with training alongside a comprehensive guidance manual.  We have best practice guidelines for our Chat service.  Library Help face to face training (Doc B) has been provided to all staff and is arranged for all new starters. The Learning Lab also has material so staff can refresh themselves on best practice at anytime and there is a quiz so people can test themselves.  

We have face to face deliveries of Welcome Host, Welcome All and REACT customer service training planned for this academic year. We also have our Welcome Host LibGuide which aims to recreate the content and activities in an online environment for those that are unable to attend a face to face session e.g. the overnight attendants.  

We monitor customer satisfaction through the Tell Us What You Think service.

5.2.2 We identify individual customer needs at the first point of contact with us and ensure that an appropriate person who can address the reason for contact deals with the customer.

We continue to use our Library Help triaging procedure (Docs A - D) to ensure that customers are directed to the correct point of contact regarding their query, no matter what means they use to contact us in the first instance.

Welcome Host training supports staff in developing their communication skills to ensure they successfully identify customer needs.

5.2.3 We promptly share customer information with colleagues and partners within our organisation whenever appropriate and can demonstrate how this has reduced unnecessary contact for customers.

The introduction of the Reading List Library Help queue this year, provides a single point of entry for all staff and students with any Reading list related question. Queries triaged by staff can be passed seamlessly on to those with specialist subject or reading list knowledge, and answered from that point. In the past, reading list queries were dealt with on a per school/faculty basis but Library Help has given a much more responsive and less confusing solution.  Comprehensive training has been provided to all staff to support them in the new process (Doc A).

Library Help significantly improved our customer service as customers are seamlessly and appropriately referred without further action from them (Docs B & C). 

The Tell Us What You Think process ensures complaints are dealt with by the most appropriate staff member and forwarded to other University departments where necessary (Doc D).

5.2.4 Where service is not completed at the first point of contact we discuss with the customer the next steps and indicate the likely overall time to achieve outcomes.

Library Help enquiries can evidence that we discuss with customers the process and timescales for dealing with their enquiry when an immediate solution is not possible (Doc A).

If staff cannot take an online chat or face to face enquiry to completion at first point of contact, they are encouraged to work with the customer to submit the enquiry as a ticket into Library Help, ensuring a one stop service.  The ticket can be assigned immediately to the most appropriate team or claimed by the original member of staff if they can complete the enquiry after further research.  We then work to a 3 day turnaround deadline (Doc B).

Where University archive enquiries require Special Collections staff to undertake records research, customers are contacted to confirm that research is being undertaken and they are provided with estimated timescales (Doc C).

5.2.5 We respond to initial enquiries promptly, and if there is a delay we advise the customer and take action to rectify the problem.

Library Help is monitored constantly throughout staffed hours, with Library Chat supported by overseas colleagues overnight. We can evidence that staff keep customers informed of the progress of their enquiry and timescales for completion where possible as seen in evidence for 5.2.4. Library Help is monitored regularly to ensure that enquiries are progressed  promptly (Doc A).

Evidence is included to show Inter Library Loans staff contacting a customer to update them on timescales and resolving problems (Doc B).

Staff may have to contact external database providers in order to explore problems on a customer's behalf.  We can evidence an example of this and how we kept the customer informed (Doc C).

5.3.2 We are meeting our current standards for timeliness and quality of customer service and we publicise our performance against these standards.

We are meeting our Library Standards and we publicise our performance on the web, via plasma screens (Doc A) and explain any dips in performance.  We participate in national university customer surveys and analyse our mystery shopping to ensure we are maintaining the quality of our services (Doc B).  We also provide information on Tell Us What You Think feedback on the Web and Library displays.

Library Help and Chat statistics collated monthly: monthly, daily and hourly numbers; chat comments & ratings; missed chats; We analyse why chats have been missed to try and minimise re-occurrence. Where positive chat comments and ratings are given, we feed this back to the staff involved. When negative comments and ratings are provided, we look at the chat transcripts to see why, and where necessary discuss with staff involved or use as scenarios for best practice refresher training. We deliver statistics to staff at regular intervals via a staff blog and staff forums.

We monitor our Chat response time target of 60 seconds.  The average wait time for the 3749 answered chats in the last 12 months has been 10 seconds.  We have 2 staff members answering Library Help tickets, Chat and the phone at core times which helps to ensure we meet our response time target. In the last 12 months we have missed 41 chats out of a total of 3790. We analyse each month why these chats have been missed.

5.3.3 Our performance in relation to timeliness and quality of service compares well with that of similar organisations.

Following collaboration and sharing best practice with University Library of Sheffield regarding LibAnswers, we set up a UK wide LibApps User Group for other University Libraries within the UK who are using LibApps. We have held three UK LibApps User Group workshops to discuss and share how we are using and developing LibApps: at Newcastle University (Feb 18), Sheffield (Nov 18), and Leeds (Nov 19). These have been incredibly useful for benchmarking, to share best practice and gain insight into how we may be able to use and develop our LibApps from Springshare. This sharing of user experience helped the decision making when trialling and purchasing LibCal and LibWizard from the LibApps suite of products. We set up a UK HE Academic Libraries discussion forum within the Springshare Lounge, and now have 77 members. We use this forum to ask advice of each other, and to share feedback to Springshare.

This academic year (2018-2019) Newcastle University Library’s Education Outreach Team have undertaken a benchmarking exercise of Special Collections outreach work against comparable Universities.

The purpose of this benchmarking exercise was to find out more about the education outreach provision and facilities at other HE institutions and to compare this to our own with a view to gaining new ideas and making recommendations for the future development of our Special Collections outreach work.

We identified and visited four other university libraries in the United Kingdom who do outreach with local schools based on materials in their Special Collections  (Doc A).

Special Collections also instigated a project to phase out photocopying in order to focus on digitisation of materials instead.  This change would bring improvements for customers and the efficiency of the service.  As part of the research before making this change Special Collections benchmarked against 24 Special Collections services at Russell Group Universities (Doc B).