Farnum, Cecile M, Baird, Catherine & Ball, Kathryn, 2011 “Can I Make A Suggestion? Your Library Suggestion Box as an Assessment Tool“, Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, vol. 6 no. 1.
This article is essentially a survey of different libraries and their attitude towards, and use of, their in-house suggestion box (electronic or real-life). The authors survey literature to come up with a list of advantages and disadvantages, then they survey and interview Canadian academic libraries to find out what they do in terms of taking and answering patron suggestions. The authors follow up with some theoretical material on customer complaints, and finish with a nice little list of Suggestion Box Success recommendations.
I liked this article because it made me think of getting back to basics as far as service, and service quality, goes. A lot of libraries, ours included, spend a great deal of money on professionalized surveys every couple of years, and then even more money on analysis. Don’t get me wrong, I think those sorts of surveys are great, very useful, and hey, I like pretty coloured pie charts and gap analyses as much as the next chick.
Mmm...Pie...Statistically Delicious!
Evidence-based practice in librarianship has meant that quantitative measures of service have tended to be favoured over qualitative – so the poor old suggestion box has gone out of fashion a bit. Big surveys give big complex results sets which can tell you lots in a terribly scientific fashion – and can also, in my experience, be chopped up and reassembled specifically to show off what a fantastic job the library’s doing. I’m not saying don’t do a big survey, just that it’s not the be-all-and-end-all of library user experience measurement.
A lot of my colleagues are dismissive of what they call the “bad-tempered crazies in the suggestion box”. I remember reading somewhere that 96% of unhappy customers will never actually make a formal complaint about a perceived bad service. So for every 1 “crazy” there are probably 24 other patrons who feel the same but wouldn’t make a formal complaint. And it’s hard to think of bad-tempered crazies in multiples of 25! Plus, happy or satisfied customers comment something like 0.0000001% of the time (just a madeup figure, but presumably not far off. When’s the last time you told the 16-year-old at McDonalds that those McNuggets you just had were perfectly pleasant and exactly as you expected them to be?) Pity the poor library which needs to be told it’s doing a good job by its patrons… in reality, you shouldn’t be seeking feedback for an ego stroke or pat on the back.
Here’s what I think a good suggestion box/feedback mechanism does well for a library:
- Just-in-time feedback: you make a change to services or introduce something new, you get feedback about it pretty much straight away.
- You can see where the holes in your marketing/information are. For instance, if you get 20 suggestions for vending machines stocking USB’s and you’ve just bought one, chances are you’re not marketing it correctly.
- Unlike in big surveys, the “question” format is open – patrons aren’t shoehorning their thoughts about library services into a Likert scale or using wording which doesn’t necessarily apply exactly to their feedback.
To make your suggestion box effective:
- Answer quickly, answer publicly, and for goodness sake don’t get defensive. They’re picking on your opening hours, not your first born child.
- Ensure that the appropriate people are answering suggestion-box questions with appropriate responses.
- Make it visible. Maybe make it multi-format – online form, by email, something concrete in the library. Any way you can make it clear that you WANT feedback from your patrons.
- And for goodness sake, don’t lock it off to “My Own University Staff And Students Only”, as you’re shutting off a large portion of potential clients (especially if you open your stacks to the public in a non-borrowing fashion.) Some of our most interesting feedback has been from librarians in other countries regarding our online services which they could see on our website.
A great article, and on a premise that’s going to become increasingly important as Universities continue scrutinizing services like libraries for value-for-money, and as fees go up and students demand not only to get what they want, but to have tangible proof that someone cares so deeply they’ll lie awake at night if said students aren’t getting what they want. So dust off your suggestion box, take a teaspoon of cement for growing a thicker skin, and let the patrons tear into you – I dare you!
So, questions for readers (please do comment!):
- Do you think Suggestion Boxes work effectively in libraries? If not, what would make this feature work better?
- Who handles the “suggestion box” at your library? How? How would you like to see the process handled?
- What’s the funniest complaint you’ve ever gotten in your suggestion box? (Come on, we all need a laugh!)
