Customer Service Excellence

The University of Hull Library (the Brynmor Jones Library) was first awarded Customer Service Excellence in 2019, successfully achieving the University’s first Customer Service Excellence award. Customer Service Excellence is a mark of quality for our services which is focused towards the individual needs and preferences of our customers. It creates opportunities to provide innovative and improved services, striving to go above and beyond expectation. 

We are now in a rolling programme of annual assessments to maintain the Standard. In March 2024 we successfully completed the first year of a new cycle of rolling assessment, having gathered a portfolio of evidence which was supported by an in-person visit from an independent assessor who spent a day in the library observing our operations and talking to our staff, customers and partners. Our services are fully compliant in all elements of the Standard, which is an outstanding achievement. There continues to be an impressive total of seventeen Compliance Plus* elements.

Our assessor highlighted that the Library staff provide an excellent level of service, working very well as a team, and demonstrating empowerment to contribute to service development across a range of areas. Many of the ideas for service improvement have come from staff, including the introduction of job shadowing with internal partners, and the sharing of good practice.

“The Team has an outstanding in-depth understanding of its customers, that has enabled it to design and provide services that meet the needs of the full range of customer groups [...] The leadership of Library staff in developing a customer focused approach across the University is widely recognised.”

In order to be recognised as achieving Customer Service Excellence, the Library created an extensive portfolio of evidence which was presented and assessed by an external licensed body. The detailed criteria found in the Customer Service Excellence standard is split into five sections:

Customer Insight

The University Library serves many customers both within and beyond the University of Hull. To meet this criterion we had to demonstrate how we consulted our customers and provided them opportunities to feedback on our services. We have an ethos of putting customers at the heart of everything we do, focusing on how we can use data and feedback to improve our services.

The Culture of the Organisation

This customer focused culture within the University Library continues as evidence for this criterion. We had to show our commitment to fostering this culture across all levels of our employees. We competitively want to be the best and challenge others to think differently. You can view our commitment promises which relate to library culture on our webpages.

Information and Access

We provide accurate and comprehensive information to our customers in order to demonstrate that we meet this criterion. Whether that’s our library social media feeds (on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube), digital signage, library webpages, or partnering with the university to send updates via email, we measure how much communication has been understood to ensure these methods are effective.

Delivery

Delivery focuses on how the University library utilises comments, complaints and feedback in order to make adjustments to our operations. We have a responsibility to adhere to national and statutory targets such as our equality, diversity and inclusion provisions and this forms part of our evidence for this criterion.

Timeliness and Quality of Service

The University Library publishes expected response times to customer contact, whilst monitoring data to maintain high levels of communication quality. Our business and service standards help us to maintain standards and consistency of our service. We review these monthly, putting in place any action necessary alongside benchmarking our approach with other institutions.

*Our compliance pluses are:

- 1.1.1 We have an in-depth understanding of the characteristics of our current and potential customer groups based on recent and reliable information.

1.1.2 We have developed customer insight about our customer groups to better understand their needs and preferences.

1.1.3 We make particular efforts to identify hard-to-reach and disadvantaged groups and individuals and have developed our services in response to their specific needs.

1.3.5 We have made positive changes to series as a result of analysing customer experience, including improved customer journeys.

2.1.1 We demonstrate outstanding corporate commitment to putting the customer at the heart of service delivery, both at University and Service level

2.1.2 We use customer insight to inform policy and strategy and to prioritise service improvement activity

- 2.1.3 We have policies and procedures that support the right of all customers to expect excellent levels of service

2.1.6 We empower and encourage all employees to actively promote and participate in the customer-focused culture of our organisation.

2.2.2 Our staff our polite and friendly to customers and have an understanding of customer needs

2.2.4 We can demonstrate how customer-facing staffs’ insights and experiences are incorporated into internal processes, policy development and service planning

2.2.5 We value the contribution our staff make to delivering customer focused services, and leaders, managers and staff demonstrate these behaviours.

3.3.3 We have improved the range, content and quality of verbal, published and web-based information we provide to ensure it is relevant and meets the needs of customers.

3.4.2 We have developed co-ordinated working arrangements with our partners that ensure customers have clear lines of accountability for quality of service.

- 4.1.1 We have challenging standards for our main services, which take account of our responsibility for delivering national and statutory standards and targets

- 4.2.4 We have developed and learned from best practice identified within and outside our organisation, and we publish our examples externally where appropriate.

4.3.2 We have an easy to use complaints procedure, which includes a commitment to deal with problems fully and solve them wherever possible within a reasonable time limit.

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