Your feedback is important to us

We have a strong customer service culture and strive to increase customer satisfaction. We use your feedback to improve our service delivery by really getting to know your needs and expectations. As current holders of the Customer Service Excellence Award with compliance plus in 13 of the criteria, we monitor and review our processes as part of continuous improvement. Your feedback provides us with key information about what you think as a user of our services and helps us make informed decisions about improvements; it also helps us identify area where we are doing a good job.

What happens when you provide feedback?

There is a Departmental strategy in place to monitor and respond to feedback suggestions. We collate all of the feedback into a report which is presented to managers meetings for review on a monthly basis where we look for themes, explore ideas and discuss solutions to problems identified. Please do add your contact details when providing feedback, that way we can respond to your directly.

What do we do with your feedback?

If we can implement a change or improvement based on your feedback we will. If however we can’t, we will explain to you the reasons why.

Here’s a summary of what has happened as a result of your feedback during Autumn 2017

• Standing desks have been purchased and are now available on the 1st floor of the Morrell Library
• We have provided student kitchen facilities on the 1st Floor of the Harry Fairhurst building
• YorSearch has been updated to include the shelf mark in the search results screen
• New welcome emails are now sent to new PhD students, telling them about Library Services
• Improvements have been made to the wifi access in the Harry Fairhurst building
• A new accessible study room is now available in the Harry Fairhurst building
• We are in discussions with our colleagues in Estates about the varying temperatures across our buildings

Please continue to pass on your ideas about how we can make improvements. Further details of how to submit feedback is available on our web pages or you can simply pop in and speak to someone in person at the Helpdesk based in the Library and Kings Manor Library, or add a comment to our whiteboard in the Foyer of the Morrell building.

Bringing hygge to the Library

Joanne Casey on the art of staying cosy...

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Hygge has been a buzzword in recent months; as you probably already know it's a Danish word that reflects the idea of making everyday life more enjoyable. For me, and many others, that means being cosy.

Over the years, the temperature in the Library has been a common theme in the feedback we receive from you. Particularly on social media, people often tell us that they're too cold in the Library buildings; sometimes on the same day as other people tell us that they're too hot!

What this makes clear to us is two things; everyone feels the temperature differently, and (even with the heating on) there are definite cold spots in the Library that we can't eradicate - desks by the windows in Morrell are a case in point.

We advise people to wear layers when studying in the Library, and you can take hot drinks into Morrell and Fairhurst, but we spotted an opportunity to add something extra. We now have blankets near the Help Desks in both the University Library and the King's Manor Library. If you're feeling cold, just help yourself to a blanket and return it when you leave.

In addition, we've provided temporary heaters in the King's Manor Library to counteract the chill from the thick stone walls. They'll be there until the weather warms up, and we'll continue to monitor the temperature.

These aren't big changes, but we hope they'll make your time in the Library a happier experience. Remember that your feedback matters to us, and we act on it wherever we can. Find out how you can share your thoughts with us:

• Library feedback

Getting to know you

Jackie Knowles, Head of Customer Services, explains how we put our customers (that means you!) at the heart of our developments.

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Next summer it will be twenty years since I qualified as an 'Information Professional'. Reflecting back on the years since I landed in the world of libraries I personally have changed enormously, just the usual list of becoming older, (a bit) wiser, finding more grey hairs and wrinkles etc. However, more notably the environment I work in, and libraries themselves, have significantly changed around me along the way. There are the obvious changes; computers have replaced typewriters, furniture is no longer uniformly brown and we've got far more sophisticated electronic resources than the CD-ROMS I used in my first job. But alongside the obvious there are also the more subtle changes that have taken place in our attitudes and ways of working. When I first joined the profession there was a strong focus on staff being 'professionally qualified' librarians and a strong theme was that we, as professional staff, knew best about what to provide for our library users. This wasn't incorrect, and I'm sure plenty of good things were going on in libraries at the time, but today the relationship we have with our customers is much more central to our service planning than the use of our own expertise. Asking our customers what they would like to see us provide, and how, is now paramount to our success.

A watershed project

In 2012 we introduced our Flexible Loans here in the Library and for me personally that was a watershed moment when the penny really dropped that we were able to do things differently and with success. At the time we embarked on the project to design a new way of lending books to our users we threw out the rule book and set about the challenge of designing a loans model which actively sought participation in the design process from our user community.

"I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen."
Ernest Hemingway, Author and Journalist

Listening to our users and feeding their ideas and preferences into our resulting service development became our primary aim. This contrasted starkly with the way things had been done previously when loans review projects had usually been structured around library staff locking themselves away in darkened rooms to complete the work required. The end result of those old style reviews was usually a few minor changes on the loans model - 20p on a fine here, a new loan category there - things that really lacked the impact we wanted to see. But it was "job done, see you again in another few years for the next review".

With Flexible Loans we really changed our approach and as a result I believe we really changed the impact we had. The model has resulted in a much more customer focused method of loaning books, and while it isn't perfect, it works well and ensures that our book stock is working hard and getting circulated to those who need it. Our flexible loans work inspired us to think differently about how we work with library users. Since then we've put the customers at the heart of everything we do and we have seen the same principles used in the loans work be adopted, adapted and taken to new heights across all our areas of activity within Information Services.

A credit to the team

Sitting in the background of this change to the way we worked, both driving and guiding our customer engagement, has been our work on implementing the Customer Service Excellence (CSE) framework and accreditation. To find out more read the story of our accreditation in a previous post of mine. CSE is the tool we have embedded across Information Services to support our desire for continuous improvement. We’ve held the standard for over four years now and we use it to monitor how we are doing when it comes to our customer service skills, as well as our customer focus. It has prompted us to ask ourselves what else can we do to further improve our engagement with our customers. As such is providing the context for some work we are doing this year to explore, formalise and expand our customer engagement strategy.

Writing our engagement strategy

During academic year 2016/17 we are writing up our engagement strategy. We're not even sure we want to call it a strategy at this stage, but we know we want to discuss what customer engagement means to us. We are asking ourselves what we do, why we do it, how we do it and how we might want to measure it. We want to understand the skills and techniques our staff need in order to do customer engagement well. And then we plan to write all that down so we can share our thoughts with each other and our customers. It is worth noting that our definition of customer is quite wide ranging, we apply it not only to the people who come through our doors or request our help but also to each other and colleagues we work alongside across the University - those we call our internal customers.

Grab & Go!

As part of background research for working on our engagement strategy we are doing some customer consultation during November and December and will be asking for the opinions and ideas from our users about a range of initiatives we're working on in Information Services. This consultation will take the form of one of our 'Grab & Go' surveys, a technique where we 'grab' someone to ask if they can spare a few moments to answer a few questions, give them a very short questionnaire to fill out and then let them 'go'.

By doing a high number of grabs and keeping the questions tightly focused we can create efficiencies and gather opinions and ideas on a wide range of topics all at the same time. This year along with the question about how important engagement is to customers and how they would like to us to engage with them, we are asking about new user induction, our Digital Skills Guide, our Customer Charter and the Service Standards we set ourselves.

Tell us more

If you see us out and about doing our Grab & Go please do spare us a few minutes to let us know what you think. Alternatively if you'd like to get in touch to comment on our engagement strategy, or any other area of our work, we have our feedback scheme available or you can email me direct, see box below for further information. So go on, do your bit to help shape and build our services in a way that puts you at the heart of what we do.

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• Customer Charter
• Service Standards
• Your feedback
• Customer Service Excellence
• Contact us

Knowing what you think

Joanne Casey explains why your thoughts matter to us, and reports on changes made in response to feedback.

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We are a customer-focused service, and we work hard to ensure that what we offer - in the Library, IT Services, or the Archives - meets your needs. So getting feedback from you, whether it's positive, negative, or a request for a new service, is important to us. It helps us to find out more about what you want and to identify how we can make improvements to our services.

How we gather feedback

We collect your feedback in a variety of ways; by email, in person, on comment cards, via Facebook and Twitter, or on the new comments board at the Library entrance. We respond directly to any comments that are submitted with contact details, but we also bring all the feedback together in a monthly report, reviewed by managers, and decide how we can act on it.

The well-used Library comments board

What happens next?

We look at what you tell us, we discuss whether improvements are possible, and we respond.

If we can change in response to feedback, we will...

In the past year, we have:

• Adjusted loan limits, so that you can now borrow up to 75 items at a time (previously 50 items)
• Increased the initial loan period from four weeks to eight weeks
• Edited the wording on the renewal screen in My Library account to make the renewal process for interlending items clearer
• Begun providing IT support in the evenings and at weekends, and introduced an appointments system for more complex IT queries
• Increased student spaces in the Library buildings, by opening up former staff offices and the old IT Support Office for student use, as well as opening up the meeting rooms on the second floor of Fairhurst to be used as study spaces in the evenings and at weekends. Over the coming year, it’s likely that other staff will move out of the Fairhurst and these spaces will also become available for study use.

...but sometimes we have to say no

The answer to your comments won't always be 'yes', but if it is 'no', we'll explain why.

For example, we've had a few requests for a microwave in the Library. There are lots of reasons why we can't provide this; the lack of a suitable space, problems with keeping it clean (it's not the responsibility of University cleaners to clean kitchen equipment), and cost (a standard domestic microwave wouldn't be a suitable choice). However, we've passed on this feedback to the University, and there's now a discussion underway about allowing students who live off-campus to access College kitchens.

We've also had lots of feedback about our turnstiles, and we know that several of you don't enjoy having to scan your cards to leave the Library. However, the information that we collect on use of the Library - how long people spend here, which departments or student groups are using the Library most, when people are most likely to come in - is really valuable to us in identifying how we need to develop our services (rest assured, we don’t retain any personal data from the turnstiles). So, whilst we understand how you feel, this isn't something that we plan to change.

The positives

We get lots of good feedback, about our staff and about our services. This matters to us, because it shows what we're getting right. We always make sure that these comments are shared both to managers and teams, so that our colleagues know that they're making a difference. Recent highlights include:

• Thanks as ever for the super speedy response! 1
• Thank you for the years of endless support #uoygraduation 2
• A huge thank you to @UoYITServices who have been brilliant helping with our move. Great team!
• Exceeded expectations, teaching was excellent and fun 3
• You are THE MOST WONDERFUL IT SUPPORT SERVICE IN THE WHOLE OF YORKSHIRE
• Brilliant library and very helpful staff. I just love wandering around exploring the books and journals on the shelves. A great atmosphere for learning.

Thank you all, and keep telling us what you think!

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More information

Who the compliments were for, where not stated.

1. Library Twitter feed
2. Library
3. Borthwick Institute for Archives

Find us on Twitter:

• Library Twitter feed
• IT Services Twitter feed
• Borthwick Institute for Archives Twitter feed

Read more about how we gather & respond to feedback:

• Information Services feedback

"An invaluable resource" - your thoughts on the Minster Library

Joanne Casey finds out what you think of the Minster Library, and details recent improvements.

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The Minster Library, in the Minster Gardens.
Photograph by Paul Shields

In February last year, we ran a survey to find out how visitors to the Minster Library feel about the services offered. We're taking this opportunity to report back on what we learnt and how we've reacted to it, and to encourage you to provide further feedback on our services.

What you liked…

Special Collections in the Minster Library
Photograph by Paul Shields

• The range of the collections
• The unique resources
• The staff
• The chance to study in a fascinating building

"The Minster Library is an invaluable resource"

"Exceptionally generous and attentive staff!"

What you'd like to see changed…

• Borrowing arrangements
• Document production times
• Charges for reprographics
• Wifi provision
• Opening hours

What we've done...

Inside the Minster Library
Photograph by Paul Shields

Services provided by the Minster Library now match those offered by the University Library as far as possible; so, staff and students can now borrow up to 50 items, on the same flexible loan model that the rest of the Library uses; items borrowed from the Minster can now be returned at King's Manor or the main University Library (and vice versa). We're also introducing a trial of the Book Delivery Service, which is already running successfully between the Morrell and King's Manor libraries.

Unfortunately there are some things that we're not able to change at the moment, but we can explain why that is:

Document production 

It's frustrating when you have to wait for us to fetch you items that aren't held on the open shelves. We always try to make such items available as quickly as possible after you request them, but as the Minster Library has a small team of staff, it's not always possible to do this as quickly as we - or you - would like. We do our best to meet our target of producing the documents for you to use within 24 hours

Photograph by Paul Shields

Charges for reprographics

These charges are set by the Minster, rather than by the University. They reflect the fact that these are unique and precious resources, and the charges have to cover the cost of providing reprographics, and enable the Minster to make a small profit on this aspect of the service. However we are reviewing our charging structure in line with other comparable institutions, and hope to introduce changes soon.

Wifi provision

The older the building, the trickier it often is to provide reliable wifi coverage in all areas. Wifi within the Minster Library is provided by the Minster IT team, rather than by the University's IT Services, and they are investigating the situation. IT Services are also looking into the possibility of providing eduroam coverage within the Library.

Opening hours

The Minster Library is open 9am - 5pm on weekdays. It's closed at the weekends. Unfortunately, it's not possible for us to provide the extra staffing resource necessary to extend the opening hours.

Photograph by Paul Shields

What else could we do?

We'll be running another user survey soon, so you can let us know what else we could do to improve the services we offer. And, of course, your comments are welcome at any time - you can email lib-enquiry@york.ac.uk, fill in a comment card, or let us know in person. You can find out more about how we receive and respond to feedback at:

• Library feedback

Library services for staff and students with disabilities

Jack Coppack outlines recent improvements to the services we offer to support Library users with disabilities.

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When it comes to improving the accessibility of our services to staff and students with disabilities, we are aware that we can always be doing more. Already this year, we have upgraded a number of our services based on your feedback. Whilst we are constantly striving to meet expectations of accessibility, we wanted to share some of our successful (and ongoing) improvements.

Hearing Loops: All of our public contact points in the Library are now equipped with hearing loops. The system is able to wirelessly amplify conversations whilst reducing background noise for users with hearing aids.

Accessible Entry to Library: In addition to the disabled parking spaces available in the Library car park, we have also changed the process for entering via the accessible entrance at the rear of the Morrell. Now, staff and students who've registered their disability with us will be able to independently access the building using their University cards. All of our registered users with disabilities are also able to bypass the turnstile system in the main foyer and use the central accessible gate. This access point scans the chip in your university card, negating the need to hold the barcode directly onto a scanner. If you need to register yourself as having a disability, please speak to the Library & IT Help Desk, who will be more than happy to help you.

Library Catalogue Terminals: We have updated and modernised the browsers on Library catalogue terminals to include additional accessibility options.

Library Tours (ongoing): 1-to-1 tours of the Library are offered to all our registered disabled students. As part of this tour, we are working towards including further details about our IT support services for disabled users.

Visual Impairment Support (ongoing): We dedicate a lot of time to creating accessible reading material in suitable electronic formats for our rapidly growing community of visually impaired students. Currently, we are working with a range of people across the University to improve the process and communication around this service and to ensure that it delivers a high quality and timely service.

Whilst we are pleased with our progress so far, we never want to rest on our laurels! We thrive off your feedback to tell us how we can improve our services. We have an established Information Services Disability Group which meets on a termly basis. Membership includes people from Disability Services, Equality and Diversity Office, YUSU and GSA as well as selection of our own staff and it is an effective way for us to discuss your suggestions and implement structured, enterprising plans of action.

Please have your say and help us to better ourselves by contacting us with feedback and/or suggestions at lib-enquiry@york.ac.uk, or by filling out a comment card in one of the Library buildings.

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Useful links:

• Disability Services
• YUSU information for disabled students

It's a mystery

Jackie Knowles explains the value of strangers in our midst.

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In Spring 2015, the Library gathered some additional feedback about our Help Desk and staff customer service skills when we were subject to two mystery visits.

Photo by John Houlihan

Mystery visiting is when a 'fake' customer is employed to visit your premises, use your range of services, and ask questions at your customer contact points, usually using a defined scenario. The mystery visitor then provides you with structured feedback and comment about their experience; it is equivalent to a mystery shopping experience in the retail sector. The best mystery visiting results come when the scenario is as close as possible to a genuine enquiry that your service regularly receives so that the mystery visitor can remain incognito and not be spotted by the staff being assessed.

Our mystery visits were arranged through a collaborative project organised by the White Rose Libraries Customer Services Group. Working with colleagues at the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds we developed a model for a three way exchange visit and a comparative methodology for assessment, all based around simulating a real customer scenario. Putting it simply, we employed a York student to go and mystery visit the Sheffield and Leeds libraries and report on their experience, and those institutions did the same sending two anonymous visitors our way.

The scenario we chose for our mystery visit was a postgraduate visiting another university in the region, registering for the Sconul Access scheme and then using the library to study. Our methodology looked at the visitor experience across several dimensions including email and telephone responses to queries, an assessment of the physical premises at each library, as well as specific feedback on interactions with staff at the help desk.

When the results came in we were really pleased with what we were able to find out. We had lots of positive comments affirming that our customer service skills remain a strength, but we were also able to draw out quite a few areas where we identified we could do even better. The way the project was structured meant that we had been able to closely question the mystery visitors and drill into the nuances of their visit; this added a considerable level of detail to the overall picture which we just don't get from reading your comment cards and survey responses. The extra dimension of being able to ask our visitors to directly compare experiences across the three institutions was a real bonus too.

As with all our feedback, we've shared our results widely among our front line staff and managers in the Library. We've also been able to carry out group coaching sessions with the Help Desk team to draw out the lessons learned and discuss specific changes or training we can plan on the back of the the findings.

Finally, we plan to repeat the mystery visiting programme again in the coming year, again using the White Rose collaborative model, and we are looking forward to further deepening our understanding of the customer experience and comparing notes with our colleagues across the region.

If you'd like to find out more please do not hesitate to contact me (jackie.knowles@york.ac.uk).

Customer Service: being excellent

Jackie Knowles talks about our ongoing mission to maintain excellence in the service we provide to our customers.

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We are proud to announce that the Information Directorate has successfully been revalidated for the Customer Service Excellence (CSE) accreditation.

In the twelve months since first achieving our CSE accreditation in April 2014 we have been working hard at ensuring we maintain our focus on our users and striving for excellence across everything we do. This has meant continuing to listen and engage with our users, making more improvements based on what we find out, continuing to share our good practice and maintaining our overall culture of putting customers at the heart of everything we do.

Our CSE revalidation visit took place in March and took the form of a 'health check' looking both at areas where we had identified where there was room for improvement and those areas where we excel. Our assessor came on site for a day and a half to meet with our staff and customers. We arranged a packed programme of discussions, tours and meetings for the assessor, including focus groups with users of York Minster Library and telephone interviews with some of our archives depositors and users. We also took the opportunity to showcase some of our best practice projects and ongoing work.

Highlights of the work we presented are:

• A full review of our feedback routes and complaint handling processes. We have refreshed our complaints policy and created a series of new user friendly complaints pages to explain what to do when things have gone wrong. We are also following up individually when people have complained to check that they are happy with how we handled things:
• Complaints
• Ensuring that we are measuring and reporting against our agreed service standards:
• Service Standards
• Sharing the results of some work we had been doing on understanding whether our users felt they were fairly treated.
• Explaining how we are working to track more of our customer interactions through building a Customer Relationship Management database to track our interactions with academic departments, and through the introduction of enquiry logging in the Borthwick.
• Outlining the creation of the White Rose Libraries office based here in York as a case study of our working in partnership with others:
• White Rose Libraries
• Sharing the details of our reviews and improvements to the start of session experience for users across both the Library and IT Services.
• Presenting information about negotiations we've undertaken with suppliers to ensure we can offer improvements to functionality, value for money and the user experience of software.

We are happy to report that our assessor was impressed with the range of work we had completed and commented that the Directorate continued to display a "culture of customer service and continual improvement". This continued success is something that we celebrate and is a strong reflection of the hard work of all our staff.

Three of the four areas previously rated as being of partial compliance will now be rated as fully compliant with the standard. In addition, two further areas will now be rated as being Compliance Plus (areas of best practice), these are:

• We have made the consultation of customers integral to continually improving our service and we advise customers of the results and action taken.
• Our staff are polite and friendly to customers and have an understanding of customer needs.

Looking ahead we are keen to keep up the good work and look forward to more CSE assessment visits in the years to come. We are already starting to think about our revalidation for spring 2016 and planning for our full re-assessment which will take place in 2017.

Further information

Customer Service Excellence is a government backed industry standard that assesses (against 57 different criteria) whether services are efficient, effective, excellent, equitable and empowering – with the users always and everywhere at the heart of service provision.

If you're interested in learning more about Customer Service Excellence we'd be happy to share our experiences. Please contact Jackie Knowles, Head of Customer Services.

Kettles and iMacs - how we respond to your comments

Joanne Casey highlights some of the changes and developments we've made in response to your feedback.

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Your comments and feedback - whether you pass them to us in writing, by email, in person or on social media - are a crucial element in our service development. Feedback is considered on receipt, and again by managers within Library, IT and Archives. We can't always act on your suggestions, but when we do, we like to let you know.

• Feedback

These recent developments have all been informed by your comments.

Book Delivery Service

This facility has been in place since Summer 2014, allowing staff and students based at King's Manor
to request items held at the main University Library for delivery to King's Manor, and vice versa.

This scheme was well-received from its implementation, but recently we were asked to further raise awareness of the service, especially amongst students at King's Manor. We've responded to this with posts on social media, information on the digital screens around campus, and information sent to the department to share with students.

We continue to receive positive feedback about the service:

• Fantastic service - many thanks.
• It's great! Fast & efficient and really useful.
• I love this service ... so easy, and the book turns up quickly, thank you!

Behaviour and space 

As ever in the approach to exams, the Library has been busy - much as we'd like to have a seat for every student, space and fire regulations don't allow for this.

However, we've done our best to make your life easier and to encourage best use of the space available in a number of ways:

• Our seating availability page shows where there is space in the Library - it's on the web, and also displayed on the digital screens.
• Seating availability
• We've worked with the University to provide and promote pop-up study spaces across campus - our blog post 'Taking your Library home' introduces the Library resources that you can access wherever you are.
• Taking your Library home
• We've encouraged use of our 'Text a problem' service so that we can take quick action where people aren't respecting the needs of other Library users - whether this means talking in the silent area, or reserving seats with bags, coats and books when they leave.
• We've received repeated reports of people leaving property here overnight to keep a place for the morning, so our overnight teams check the Library and note any apparently abandoned property - if it's still there at 9am when we start to get busy, it's removed to free up the space.

Find out more about how we believe we can work together to make the Library a happy and effective place for all - and please get in touch if you have any suggestions:

• Library behaviour

Hot water in the Library cafe

The kettle by Benjamin Lehman
Used under a Creative Commons licence

Over the years, lots of people have asked us to provide hot water in the Library, for drinking, for
making tea and coffee, and for adding to instant meals like noodles.

We've talked to Commercial Services, and agreed that we would provide a kettle next to the water cooler when the Library Cafe is closed overnight. Commercial Services are now also providing self-service flasks of hot water during the day.

Please remember to stick to the Library policies on food and drink:

• if you make yourself hot food like noodles, please only eat these in the cafe; 
• if you make hot drinks to take to your desk in the Library, always use a lidded mug.

No more printed receipts

We know it's important to many of you that we do as much as we can to protect the environment - over the years, we've introduced power-saving on PCs, provided recycling bins in the Library and IT rooms, and ensured that our printers are filled with paper approved by the Forestry Stewardship Council. Our latest change is to stop issuing printed receipts for standard loans and returns. You can still check due dates online and in the weekly account summary that we email to you.

"Glad to see that @UoYLibrary are doing away with paper receipts. Save the environment and all that jazz!"

Office 365

In the Autumn we announced that we had subscribed to Office 365 in order to provide students with a free copy of the Microsoft Office suite to install on their own PCs, laptops, tablets etc. Almost immediately, members of staff asked whether this could be made available to them too.

Although staff already have access to MS Office for University owned PCs and laptops through the Campus Agreement, it made sense to give them the opportunity to install it for free on their own devices, and on University owned tablets and smartphones, which aren't covered by the campus Agreement. Accordingly, Office 365 was rolled out to staff in May.

• Office 365

Wifi

We've had lots of comments from students in Constantine College and Halifax College who feel that the wifi service isn't meeting their expectations. Our Networking team have been carrying out some detailed investigations, and have changed the wifi setup in some areas to establish whether this improves the situation. Residents of these areas (Constantine blocks A and E, and Ainsty Court) have been asked to complete a short survey to help us find out whether to continue with the new setup - we hope to be able to report more in our next update.

iMac trial

iMac by Adam Maracz

Used under a Creative Commons licence

From time to time, both staff and students have asked why we don't provide a Mac service. In response to this, our Desktop and Printing Services team have investigated and discovered that this is now something we can feasibly offer. We're running a trial iMac service in the Fairhurst building over the summer, and will decide at the end of the trial whether this is something we should continue, or indeed expand.

• Macs-imising IT rooms

Where does the feedback go?

Kirstyn Radford, Research Support Librarian, explains how your feedback is helping us to improve the Library catalogue. 

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Regular users of YorSearch, our Library catalogue, can't fail to have noticed an insistent purple tab nudging their results.

YorSearch feedback button

This new feature was launched at the start of 2014/15 to make it easy for Library users to tell us about any difficulties they experience when searching the catalogue, and any noteworthy successes! You’re welcome to share a screenshot with us as a record of your experience.

Results from recent Library surveys have given us pause for thought: not everyone finds the catalogue interface straightforward. Exciting new additions to our collections might languish unnoticed on the shelves if they're not prominent in search results. Equally frustratingly, people who know our collections well occasionally report difficulty locating material they know we've got. Sometimes students (and staff) come to the Library Help Desk to ask for assistance; while we’re always happy to help, we'd ideally like to provide systems that are intuitive.

Fortunately, we're not stuck with our catalogue "straight out of the box". Several UK universities have purchased the same system, including Oxford, Bath and Sheffield: a quick glance at these widely dissimilar interfaces shows how much scope we have for local customisation. UK-wide user groups share expertise between technical teams, and a European consortium of university libraries drives forward new developments which will benefit all customers. Yet none of this external support would be sufficient without input from our users here at York, helping us to understand their scholarly needs in order to refine our catalogue's design and operability.

Your feedback is reviewed daily by the 'Digital Discovery' project team, including staff from the Help Desk and Academic Liaison as well as techies. Any glitches that can be resolved quickly are dealt with at the first opportunity and, if the person leaving the comment has provided an email address, we will keep them informed of progress. More general comments about the catalogue's look and feel, or issues which will take longer to resolve, are logged and categorised to help us plan the project's next steps.

There's a lot of literature out there about how to run a successful user experience project, and almost all writers recommend testing ideas with a user group before making changes to the live system. We are putting together a squad of students at different levels of study, from a range of departments, and this group will also be encouraged to canvass the opinions of friends and colleagues. To help focus our thinking, the project team is creating some personas, representing users in specific scenarios: do people who search the catalogue on their tablet or phone have a different experience from people sitting at a PC or standing at a terminal? What about the people who find and access Library e-resources without ever searching the catalogue? What can we learn from Google Scholar about how to design an intuitive interface?

New location maps tell you the floor and the zone for each item.

We've already launched several new features this year, including predictive text in the Search box, and an improved location map for each item in your search results.





Keep following this blog for further news about streamlined screen layouts and more flexible searching for YorSearch, developed on the basis of your feedback and evidence.

Kirstyn Radford

We want you to complain...

Joanne Casey explains why we don't mind you moaning.

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Your complaints are the life-blood of our service improvement. Getting feedback from you - whether it's positive, negative, or a suggestion for a new facility - is our best opportunity to find out more about more about what you want and identify how we can make improvements to our services.

Last year, we were accredited with the Customer Service Excellence (CSE) Award. One of the elements of CSE is a continual process of review and improvement - the award is re-assessed annually. Our assessor suggested that this year we should review our processes for accepting and dealing with complaints.

In response to this we have:

• Created easy to find feedback pages on each of our service's web sites making it simple to submit both complaints and comments
• Library feedback
• IT feedback
• Archives feedback
• Worked with our staff and provided them with updated training in complaint handling and responding to feedback
• Revised our complaint-handling policy, and made the language more user friendly
• Complaints policy

Our aim is to to deal with complaints informally wherever possible (for example, a member of staff at the Help Desk will refer your complaint to the appropriate team) but we also have a formal process in place which you (or we) can invoke when a complaint is really serious, or when the informal process hasn't worked to your satisfaction.

Once a complaint has been resolved, we now follow it up with you to check that you're happy with how it was handled and with what we did in response. So far, we're doing well - in our first three months of checking we saw 100% satisfaction with our response to complaints!

The way that we handle your complaints links to our overall approach to you as our customers - we want to hear your views, and we always encourage you to get in touch, whatever your concern.

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Find out how you can complain (if you need to) or simply pass on your feedback:

• Your feedback

Read about our responses to recent feedback:

• Lockers, language support, and more - we're acting on your feedback

Lockers, language support, and more - we’re acting on your feedback

Joanne Casey summarises recent changes made in response to your feedback.

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Learning what you think of our services is the best way for us to find out how to make them better for you. We gather your comments and suggestions together, whether they arrive by email, in person, on cards, or via Facebook and Twitter, and see how we can act on them. These are some recent developments which grew from your comments.

Library feedback

Lockers

You've been asking us to provide more lockers, so we've added more - there are now 122 lockers available on the ground floor of the Morrell - that’s an extra 102 compared to last year.

We've also added two accessible lockers on the ground floor of the Morrell - these lockers are designed to be accessible to wheelchair users, like those provided in the accessible study rooms. They're primarily intended for temporary storage, but we're happy to discuss your specific needs, and let you use them on a longer basis if necessary.

Lots of people complained to us that lockers were locked but empty, so we consulted with both YUSU and GSA about what we could do to ensure they were used more effectively. Locker keys are now issued as flexible loans, just like books and other Library items. You can renew your locker key unless it’s been reserved, and fines are chargeable on overdue requested locker keys.

We carry out regular lockers check as we still find that some people leave un-issued books in the lockers - we scan lockers to detect whether there are any unissued items. If there are, we remove the items and return them to the shelves.

Please remember that the lockers are for everyone's benefit - only use them if you need to store items temporarily, don't borrow the key and leave the locker empty just in case you need it at some point.

Postgraduate space

Availability of study spaces remains one of the hottest issues in the Library. We're at capacity, so we can't add any extra study spaces in our buildings, but we can do our best to ensure that all our spaces are used to their fullest.

An examination of usage statistics showed that keeping a small number of individual study rooms for booking by postgraduate students only was not an efficient use of space - in terms of anecdotal evidence, we also got lots of complaints from users who saw them regularly left empty. At the same time, we were getting feedback from surveys and comment cards that postgraduate students wanted more quiet space to work in, and we were aware that the silent study space in the Humanities Reading Room (Burton) was one of our least-used spaces.


We consulted with both GSA and YUSU, and decided to make all of our individual study rooms available to be booked by all users. At the same time, we transformed the silent study space in Burton into a study space specifically for researchers - this came into use at the start of the Autumn term, and is proving increasingly popular.

We'll continue to review use of our space, as it's vital that it is well used. If you're looking for a space in our buildings, it's worth checking our seating availability app - we've now made it available during term time all year round after receiving lots of positive comments about how useful you find it:

• Seating availability

IT Services feedback

Google Chrome

Lots of you have asked for Chrome to be installed on PCs in our IT classrooms and study areas, and now it's there - this means you can choose between three web browsers (Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer) to access the web.

Start of term

The start of the autumn term is the busiest time of year for the IT Support Office. Last year we saw queues out of the door for much of the first week, with new students keen to get their laptops, tablets and phones connected to the university network having to wait a long time to be seen.

We understand that arriving on campus can be a stressful time for new students and we didn't want to make the same mistakes again. We sought feedback from students and from our own staff in order to identify the problems from last year and to make arrangements to reduce them as much as possible. Key issues were waiting times, difficulty in finding the IT Support Office, lack of support on Heslington East, and problems for speakers of other language.

This year, we:

• emailed all new students in advance of their arrival with details of the help available and of how to connect to the network before coming to York
• offered support on both arrivals weekends, with IT Help Points at Heslington East and at the Library
• offered Chinese language support (Mandarin Chinese is the second most common language at the University after English)

This worked well, with shorter queues, minimal complaints, and generally good feedback on the service we offered. We intend to do the same next year.

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Find out how you can let us have your thoughts:

• Your feedback

How do you solve a problem like the start of term?

Jamie Clark, one of our IT Support Specialists, explains how we made the start of term a more pleasant experience - for students, and for our staff.

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Jamie, in live action mode
Photo by John Houlihan (johnhoulihan.com)

The start of the autumn term is the busiest time of year for the IT Support Office. Last year we were
swamped with new students keen to get their laptops, tablets and phones connected to the university network. We literally had queues out the door for much of the first week and people were having to wait a long time to be seen. Overall, at the start of the academic year 2013/14, we received 1000 more queries than we had in the same period of the previous year, putting the IT Support Office under a great deal of pressure.

We understand that arriving on campus can be a stressful time for new students and we didn't want to make the same mistakes again, which is why in March we formed a Start of Term working group. We wanted to identify the problems from last year and make arrangements to reduce them as much as possible.

One thing working in our favour was that this time postgraduate and undergraduate students would be arriving on separate weekends, unlike last year, when everybody arrived over the same weekend. But we also identified several other areas where we could improve...

Configuring devices for the network

Last year the XpressConnect network setup tool struggled to cope with the amount of users configuring their devices for the university network, resulting in more students needing to visit the IT Support Office to get connected.

This year, thanks to the brilliant work of the Networking team, the XpressConnect setup tool was available off campus, meaning that for the first time new students could configure their devices for eduroam prior to arriving at university. This helped to lessen the load on arrivals weekend and also meant that new students could have one less thing to worry about on move-in day!

IT information for new students

Last year we provided information about IT Services on the University's New students - welcome! page and our own Information for New Users page. IT User Guides were distributed to new students via their departments, with extra copies available at the Library, IT Support Office and Freshers Fair.

This year we wanted to keep those routes, but go one step further. In the first week of September new students were sent an email including details on how to get connected to the university network, where to get IT help and security advice. Further information was made available on our website and linked to in the email.

Completed wireless roll-out by start of term

Last year we had half of all student accommodation covered by the wireless network and we operating a Remote Access Point (RAP) loan scheme to cover areas with no access to wifi.

Fast-forward to this year and the wireless network covers 100% of on campus accommodation, and as such we have retired the RAP loan scheme (relieving both the IT Support Office and the Networking team of an unnecessary administrative burden). We have however kept a stock of Remote Access Points to allow us to quickly deal with wireless issues and black spots as they are reported to us.

Opened for both arrivals weekends on both campuses

Last year the IT Support Office opened for the arrivals weekend to help new students get connected to the network. Unfortunately, we struggled to cope with demand and had queues out the door consistently throughout the first week.

This year for the first time ever we provided support on the postgraduate arrivals weekend as well as the undergraduate arrivals weekend. We set up IT Help Points in the Library foyer and the Ron Cooke Hub on both these weekends - we announced these in the emails sent to new students, and promoted them via colleges and on social media. This was also the first time we’d provided support at Heslington East. We wanted to ensure that residents on both campuses had equal access to help when they first arrived. We had twice the number of staff available on the arrivals weekend as last year too, and overall we found that new students didn't have to wait long to get help.

Assistance for Chinese students

Last year one of the frequent challenges we had was understanding error messages written in other languages (some errors are difficult enough to decipher when they're written in English!) After English, Chinese is by far the most common language we see on devices brought to the IT Support Office.

This year we had help from former student Irene Chen Shen, who worked with us for two weeks across the start of term and was hired to help translate on-screen messages from Chinese to English. However, having worked in IT Support in China during her undergraduate degree, Irene was also able to assist with other walk-in queries and gave us a greatly appreciated extra pair of hands during the busy periods.

Feedback

Hopefully the measures that we put in place made things as easy as possible for all the new students to get up and running upon arrival. We conducted a survey amongst the new students last month and the feedback we received has been largely positive. For example, 88% of respondents said that the email we sent out was useful, and nearly half said they successfully set up their network connection prior to arriving on campus. Moreover, satisfaction sampling for the first two weeks of term showed 98% of customers were happy with how their query was handled.

We also asked the IT staff who worked on the Help Points and in the IT Support Office for their thoughts, and overall the feeling was that things were much less hectic than they had been in previous years. The number of enquiries received during the start of term period was down by 1000 compared to last year, meaning that the numbers returned to the levels seen in 2012. This is especially encouraging when you consider that the wireless network was supporting more than 13,000 concurrent connections this October - more than twice the number seen 12 months earlier.

We're already planning for the start of the next academic year. Whilst we've made some significant steps forward this time around, we don’t want to rest on our laurels. If you've got any feedback for us on our start of term service, you can email us at itsupport@york.ac.uk or fill out our anonymous feedback form.

What do you really think about IT?

Following on from Jackie Knowles’ post on the Customer Service Excellence (CSE) award last week, Sarah Peace reflects on what CSE has meant in practice for Information.

One of the things we've put into practice and value greatly since starting the process of achieving CSE is our customer feedback.

I've been in charge of the IT Support Office for five years and although we've always had ways our customers could provide feedback, including comment cards and the IT Survey, this is an area we've really enhanced upon. 

In March this year, we introduced a satisfaction sampling method from our enquiry handling system. This sends a satisfaction survey email to one in ten closed enquiries that we have dealt with. The survey asks two questions: Were you happy with how we handled your query? and How useful was the response you received? Users can choose to respond anonymously or leave the specific enquiry number.

We had been worried that surveying our customers like this might case survey fatigue, but a month after switching it on we wondered why hadn't done it years ago! Since March we've received over 300 replies, with 93% of respondents saying Yes, they were happy with how we handled the query, and 87% rating us four or five out of five on how useful the response was.

These results are fantastic and we’re currently beating our target of 90% which is in our Service Standards (I think we’ll need to increase this target soon!).

Here's some of the feedback we received:

“It was extremely complicated and other depts were passing me from pillar to post but you got it sorted out”

“It was handled quickly and efficiently and gave me all the options so I could choose which was the best way forward”

“Efficient and very helpful. Not a complicated process at all”

“Support team gave a fast and friendly series of responses and resolved the issue”

What do we do with this feedback? Any feedback which mentions a particular service is passed on to the service owner within the department. Any staff feedback is passed directly to the individual. One team has joked that they get so much positive feedback they may need to start a gold star chart in the office.

The difference between this feedback mechanism and others is that it’s about a specific issue and we can get back to the user on an individual basis. It also helps us to gain a greater understanding of what our customers expect.

This week we’re also running a “penny for your thoughts” campaign to sample the satisfaction level for our in person queries. Every walk-in customer is given a penny and asked to choose whether they are happy or not with the service they have received. This is a very quick and cheap way to sample satisfaction levels. This is what the box looked like on day two:

At the end of this month, we will also be running the IT Survey again for all staff and students. I would encourage you all to complete this, as we really do value your feedback and this helps to shape what IT Services will look like in the future. Please take time to look at what we’re doing with the results of the last survey we ran here.

And if you have any thoughts on how we gather feedback, we’d love to hear them.

Sarah Peace