Meeting Notes from 2/2015

Service Innovation Team (SIT) Meeting Notes

Date: 2/5/2015

Notes Prepared By: Theodora Muokebe

In attendance were:

1.       William Mayer

2.       Pedro Fonseca

3.       Patrick Atkins

4.       Djuina Hammett

5.       Mary Wagoner

6.       Laurie Covington

7.       Suzy Benton

8.       Jeff Robin

9.       Sandy Farmer

10.   Paty Bustamante

11.   Emmanuel Merenini

12.   Saima Kadir

13.   Felicia Brisco

14.   Fred Schumacher

15.   Edgar Fuentes

16.   Juliet Hoit

17.   Michael Borback

18.   Theodora Muokebe

The following topics were discussed:

1.       The intranet: How do we make this a better tool for staff? It was pointed out that the intranet is maintained by Roland Lemonious and that information is added based directives from the different departments within the organization that own the pages/sections on the intranet. It was agreed that each department should be responsible for ensuring that the information on the intranet is up to date and maintained in a timely manner. Staff should be directed to the intranet for information and the intranet should be the main source of in-house information for our staff. Another thought is that this should be worked on as a project by each department. A timeline should be given for every department to evaluate the information on their pages/sections and then decide what needs to remain and what needs to come off. They should also ensure that new processes and goals are put on the intranet so that all staff can have access to this information when needed.

Another thought was that there should be quarterly updates made on the intranet. One thing that everybody agreed on is that it should be made more searchable. It was finally decided that this may be something the communications department might want to head. Judith Hoitt volunteered to contact Greg Simpson, the Assistant Director of the Communications Department at HPL to set up a discussion about the HPL Intranet

2.       Incident Reports: Storage. As an aside to the discussion above, the issue of how and where to find the incident reports was raised. It was understood that at one point, the G: drive housed all the incident reports in a folder that was assessable to every staff member. It was acknowledged that it is important that the incident reports is available to all staff so that they can have information on what is going on in the system. A recommendation was made to have them on the intranet. It was agreed that there should be a standardized naming convention for the incident reports.

3.       Self-Check: The next topic that was discussed is how to help locations with low self-check numbers increase their self-check use. Also discussed was how to ensure consistency in how these machines are programmed for use by our customers so that they are able to use them at ease when they are at any of our locations with self-check. Our focus for increasing self-check was the Kendall Neighborhood Libraries. One of the recommendations made was for the All-Circ Machine (which doubles as a Self-Check Machine) to be moved to where the Flip Kit house is located currently on the third floor of the building. This makes sense since most of the materials that are checked out from Kendall are children’s materials. This will ensure that we are keeping up the spirit of Exceptional Customer Service Unified Service by making sure our customers are able to be conveniently helped at every point of their transaction. Also, one of the reasons, it seems, that parents on the third floor are reluctant to take their items to the first floor for check-out is because many of them are there with small children and are afraid that their children would run out of the door when they stop to check out at the Self-Check machines. They prefer that they put their children and items together, get them on the elevator and walk out the door without having to stop on the first floor. With the All-Circ machine moved closer to the desk on the third floor, it will be easier for staff to direct customers to check out their items through the All-Circ Machine and help increase the Self Check numbers for Kendall. It was also agreed that we should advocate for more self-check machines for Kendall.

The inconsistency in our Self-Check Machines was brought to the attention of members. It was observed that the Self-Check machines at the Looscan Neighborhood Library allows customers to input their email address when they want to request a receipt to be sent to them through email onto the system even if they did not have one in Sirsi to begin with. The machines at other locations do not provide our customers with this option. Another inconsistency is the type of language offered on each machine. Some have many options; others only have two – English and Spanish.

Fred Schumacher is to work on making sure that the self-check machines are allowing the system to override the missing status on items that are being checked out through the self-check machines. At present, staff will continue doing what they do until they hear differently from Fred.

4.       For Customer Service, it was agreed that phase 2 of the training is in order. Suzy promised that this is being worked on and that the HPL Way of Customer Service training and the “Give them the Pickle” trainings were just phase 1 of the plan.