Secret Shopper- Summary

I made two visits to two separate libraries and I can't say that either was a good secret shopper/readers advisory experience, in fact it was nearly non existent.  However the experience cemented my belief in customer service and how it adds value to a library.  When community libraries rely on community support and tax funds it is vital to 'sell' the value of the library both in quantitative evaluation, this can be simply circulation numbers, and qualitative evaluation, peoples experiences.  If you haven't taken courses on evaluation I highly recommend it for all specializations but especially for school and public libraries!  Practical Evaluation Techniques for Librarians by Rachel Applegate lays out the procedure and data collection from conducting secret shopper evaluation within your own library.  Honestly until I tried it in the last two weeks I wasn't sold on it effectiveness as an evaluation technique- however my thinking has changed!    

So what was my experience that led to this?  We are relatively new to this community and I don't know any of the librarians by name although they most likely recognize me as we are in the library on a regular basis. We were at the circulation desk and the librarian asked if there was anything else she could help with.  It was the perfect in!  I said I was in a bit of a reading rut and asked for some book recommendations. I was really hopeful- so far so good.  But that's where the questions ended.  There were no follow up questions about what I had read recently that I like/disliked, what my interests were, if I liked thrillers or romance.  

She said "Well have you checked out the books on this shelf here- they are are our newest books".

She pointed out a fantasy and a couple of others and left it at that.  Now I could have been more aggressive and followed up with her.  I could have asked if there were any on the shelf she had read and would recommend, but I felt like that would have been a bit of a role reversal.  I know that this library has Novelist, a great tool as we discussed last week and it wasn't used or even suggested I try it on a library computer. 

I wondered if this interaction was lacking in assistance because I am a regular there, although I would hope that even regular patrons would get more readers advisory assistance than I did. 

So I decided to try again as a new face in a new library and drove to the next town over.  If you can believe it, the experience was even worse!  The librarian didn't recognize my entrance into the library and I had get her attention in a desk back behind the circulation desk.  I wanted to confirm that I could used my card at this library.  She said yes and without another word she went back to her desk.  She didn't ask if I needed help finding anything or give me a general layout of the library even though it was obvious I was a new patron to this library.  I browsed the shelves and listed for other patron interactions, there were two others that cam in after me, but no interaction between them and the librarian.  

So while I do value and appreciate that these community libraries are available for patrons I left feeling disappointed for myself and the community. 

Applegate, R. (2013). Practical evaluation techniques for librarians. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.