ADVENTURES IN CONVERSATION University Library Services at University of Sunderland
Our Quality Promise Campaign 2011-2012 CIM MARKETING EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2012 http://marketingexcellenceaward.wordpress.com
“have you noticed they’re doing so many more imaginative things now...” The Murray Library, December 2011
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OUR ENTRY FOR THE CIM MARKETING EXCELLENCE AWARD Forward We are pleased to submit our entry, ‘Adventures in Conversation: Quality Promise Campaign’ for the Customer Experience Category of The Chartered Institute of Marketing: Marketing Excellence Awards 2012. ‘Nurturing Customer Conversations: Our Quality Model Campaign 20112012’ forms the main focus of our entry, however, we ask that our entry should be considered in the context of the multi-layered, multi-channel strategic marketing approach we have employed over the period 2009-2012. Our Campaign itself is the culmination and communication of four years of initiatives to enhance our customers’ experience through significant serviceculture change.
The main driver for our strategic marketing approach was support of University Library Services commitment to fulfilling the vision and strategic objectives of The University of Sunderland. The main focus of this vision and strategy being to ‘Enhance the Student Experience’ and University Student Voices Campaign. All of these strategic activities have been planned and delivered by University Library Services Quality and Marketing Team.
Library Services brand and an increase in advocacy. This supporting document aims to provide the strategic context to our entry and visual examples of our Quality Promise Campaign. Thank you for considering our entry. Kay Grieves Quality & Marketing Manager University Library Services
Our measures are of a qualitative and cultural nature aiming to demonstrate increased customer insight, improved customer loyalty and engagement, confidence and trust in the University
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CONTENTS Section Page No.
Section Page No.
1. Our Strategic Context 5 1.1 University of Sunderland: vision and strategic context 6 1.2 University Library Services: vision and strategic context 6 1.3 University Library Services: Strategic Plan 2012-2013 6
5. Quality Promise Campaign Themes 23 Theme 1: Customer Care and Support 25 Theme 2: Resources and Information Skills 27 Theme 3: Learning Spaces 30 Theme 4: Feedback and Communication 34 Theme 5: Equity 43 Theme 6: Knowing Our Customers 46
2. Our Strategic Marketing Approach 8 2.1 University Library Services Strategic Marketing Approach: Vision 9 2.2 Achieving our internal aims 10 2.3 Achieving our external aims 12 3. Our Quality Promise Campaign 13 3.1 Sharing with customers 14 3.2 Our Quality Promises 14 3.3 The concept 14 3.4 Encouraging team engagement with customers 14 3.5 Themed monthly campaign 15
6. Wider Impacts, Figures and Further Adventures 51 Campaign Budget 52 Professional Impact 53 Further Adventures in Conversation 54 Conclusion 55 CIM Marketing Excellence Award Attachments 56 Talking To Us 57
4. Quality Promise Brand Character 16 3.1 Concept 17 3.2 Character 17 3.3 The quality coloured dot 17 3.4 Versatility of brand 17 3.5 Suite of publicity materials 17 3.6 Expanding online presence and branding 17
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
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1
OUR STRATEGIC CONTEXT
OUR STRATEGIC CONTEXT 1.1 University of Sunderland: Vision and Strategic Context
The University of Sunderland’s Vision and strategic objectives inform University Library Services (ULS) strategic direction and therefore the aims of the ULS Quality & Marketing Team. Customer experience is at the heart of our University vision and as such forms the main driver for all marketing activities. When considering how successful we were in achieving our strategic marketing aims it would be useful to consider the University’s strategic context. University Vision ‘… to be recognised as one of the new generation of great civic universities – innovative, accessible, inspirational and outward looking; with international reach; and with remarkable local impact.’
Highlights from the University of Sunderland Academic Strategy 2008-2013
Highlights from the University of Sunderland Corporate Plan 2009-2013
To provide our learning community with the best possible student experience and life-changing opportunities through the following strategic aims which strive to,
‘Exceptional student experience’
‘constitute our institutional and individual commitment to provide a distinctive and exceptional student experience.’ Strategic Aim 1 To promote innovative and flexible learning opportunities responsive to the needs of a diverse market Strategic Aim 2 To provide a high quality academic experience for all our learners with exemplary support in a contemporary learning environment Strategic Aim 3 To prepare our students for fulfilling employment, and to make a positive contribution to society
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
‘Listen to the student voice and engage with students in a supportive manner which sets reasonable expectations, with shared understanding’ ‘ a supportive student journey from enquiry through to application through to graduation and employment’ ‘creativity in our use of technology within a blended learning environment for all members of the learning community’ ‘a culture which values our diverse student community and embed and embrace the concept of customer service’ Student Voices Through our Student Voices Initiative we aim to develop open feedback with our customers, where possible sharing ideas and responses with the student body as a whole.
1.2 University Library Services: Vision and strategic context
University Library Services are part of the University of Sunderland Student and Learning Support Service. Our Services are delivered through two campus libraries in Sunderland and one at our London Campus, as well as to customers across the globe. When considering how successful we were in achieving our strategic marketing aims it would be useful to consider the University Library Services, strategic context.
1.3 University Library Services: Strategic Plan 2012-2013 Student and Learning Support Mission Student and Learning Support (SLS)
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OUR STRATEGIC CONTEXT will support learners, enabling them to get the very best from their University of Sunderland experience. We will lead in the development and provision of a wide range of innovative systems and services assuring personal wellbeing and achievement for our whole academic community. Our SLS Vision SLS will be a vibrant, lively and challenging place to work, which has built on a commitment to customers and team working. Information will be exchanged more freely both within SLS and across services. Staff will be encouraged to make full and
positive contributions to future service developments. Our culture will be to recognise these contributions and staff achievements. This will be a challenging environment but one in which all views will be respected, where staff should enjoy making their contribution and be empowered to take decisions and use initiative. Our Values Our shared SLS Values: Teamwork, Information Sharing, Continuous Improvement, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Focus.
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
A Vision for University Library Services Our Libraries should be visible, accessible and have considerable presence both within the University, in our region and in the sector as a whole. Our buildings should be of high quality and provide ease of access for a wide range of learners. Learning environments should be inspiring and conducive to a variety of learning styles and modes and have the ability to excite our learners. Our collections should be accessible in both physical and increasingly in electronic form and should achieve best fit with clearly articulated academic needs.
Library staff will strive to provide outstanding customer service which enhances the student experience of learning and provide key support to ensure the optimum use of our collections and resources both on and off-campus at the point of need. We will continue to innovate in the way we communicate with our customers and how we deliver learning support via a range of new technologies. In summary we will be a pioneering and resourceful service, which creates maximum opportunity for our diverse learning community.
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OUR STRATEGIC MARKETING APPROACH
OUR STRATEGIC MARKETING APPROACH 2.1 University Library Services Strategic Marketing Approach: Vision The main aim of University Library Services strategic marketing approach was to fufil our commitment to ‘Enhancing the Student Experience.’ In order to achieve this and to ensure it was truly meaningful, it was clear that a multi-layered strategic approach was required. This called for both internal and external initiatives. Internal Aims •
bring about the significant
cultural shift in our service culture to enable the quality of our customers’ experience to be truly placed at the heart of our service •
improve our customer insight by identifying key customer segments and benefit-based service offers and to encourage our staff to ‘own’ their customer audiences
•
establish innovative and open communication channels and to embed a culture of honest, open and accountable conversation
External Aims •
articulate and demonstrate to our customers our commitment to service quality
•
contextualise and exemplify our commitment to quality and the benefit of our services to our customer segments at key touchpoints throughout our their journey
•
identify our customers’ journey and key customer touch-points
•
re-model our perception of performance to one of impact, benefit and difference rather than output and process
•
define and articulate our service offers in terms of the benefit they bring
stimulate customer engagement and best use of our services through competitive differentiation
•
increase honest, open customer
•
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
conversation through global communication channels •
capture, share and utilise impact intelligence
•
nurture advocacy in assisting our customers to articulate the impact and difference we make to them, to each other and to all key stakeholders
Professional Aims •
contribute to professional bestpractice in marketing in the HE library sector
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OUR STRATEGIC MARKETING APPROACH 2.2 Achieving our internal aims
•
Our Quality Model is the central initiative through which we have engendered significant cultural change and established the quality of the customers experience at the heart of our library service. This was achieved by four years of service-wide staff development work through which we:
•
refined these service offers to ensure they continued to meet our customers needs in the contemporary HE environment
•
reinvented our perception of service performance by focussing on customer-focussed impact, outcome
University Library Services Quality Model
re-defined our core service offers and our commitment to service quality (diagram of Guiding Quality Principles) through the establishment of our Quality Model Guiding Principles
and benefit rather than servicefocussed process and output •
engendered a culture of open, honest and accountable customer engagement
Our 9 Quality Model Guiding Principles Communication: You will always have the information you need to ensure that you are aware of service developments that may affect you.
Customer Care: Every time you talk to us you will meet approachable, knowledgeable, caring staff whose key motivation is to help you and ensure you get the most out of library services. Customer Support: We will give you help and support to enable you to use library resources to best effect.
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
Equity: No matter where you are, when or how you reach us, we will strive to deliver an equivalent library service. Feedback: We will always consider your comments and suggestions and respond to you. We will take action and develop services where appropriate.
Knowing our customers: We will always treat you as an individual and where possible will deliver support and services to meet your specific needs.
Library Spaces: Library spaces and virtual learning environments that are responsive to your learning needs. Resources You will have access to appropriate resources when you need them. Skills for Learning You will have the opportunity to develop information literacy skills that will help you to use library services to your best advantage, support your academic progress and your future development.
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OUR STRATEGIC MARKETING APPROACH University Library Services ‘7 Step Strategic Marketing Toolkit: How do you like your eggs in the morning’ Through the development and embedding of our Strategic Marketing Toolkit we established a successful model for defining our key customer segments; defining bespoke service offers for those segments; identifying our key service benefits and value propositions; defining our key customer messages and articulating them in a timely manner for maximum impact. • our toolkit became a key strategic tool at Sunderland • our toolkit has been enthusiastically greeted by the HE Library
Seven Step Strategic Marketing Toolkit
1 STEP 1
2 STEP 2
3 STEP 3
4
5 STEP 5
Community and has now been shared with over 90 institutions nationwide. Please see our blog at: http://marketingexcellence award. wordpress.com
•
Establishing University Library Services Social Media Presence In order to achieve our aim of open, honest global communication and to support the University’s Student Voices Commitment we established a range of social media networks including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest and Netvibes. Through these networks we have: • nurtured world-wide customer engagement and loyalty
•
6 STEP 6
•
established mechanisms for timely conversations established a culture of open, honest, accountable dialogue and sharing been able to capture impact and nurture internal and external advocacy
University Library Services Service-wide and Contextualised Customer Conversations Timeline Through mapping our conversations onto our customer journey timeline we have been able to: • enhance our customer engagement • plan and initiate the communication
•
•
of key messages and conducting benefit-based conversations at key touch-points throughout the customer journey ensure our commitment to customer conversation is embedded at all levels of our service and conversations are ‘owned’ by our teams ensure our messages and conversations are tailored and contextualised to meet the needs of our key customer segments.
7 STEP 7
Plan our campaigns
Form benefit-centred messages
Transform our service offers into benefits
STEP 4 Match our services to our customer segments Identify and segment our customers
Identify our service offers and undertake SWOT and PEST analysis
Agree our strategic direction
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
Our Quality Conversational Timeline
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OUR STRATEGIC MARKETING APPROACH 2.3 Achieving our external aims Our Quality Promise Campaign Our Nurturing Customer Conversations Quality Promise Campaign ran from September 2011 to May 2012. After four years of service-culture change and preparatory development our campaign was the public affirmation of our commitment to the quality of our customers experience. Our Campaign forms the main focus of this submission. Please see sections 3 and 4 of this document for full details.
Our Quality Promise Brand Central to our Quality Promise Campaign was the development and embedding of our Quality Promise Brand. Please see section 4 of this document for full details.
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
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OUR QUALITY PROMISE CAMPAIGN
OUR QUALITY PROMISE CAMPAIGN 3.1 Sharing with our customers And so in the summer of 2011 the time felt right for all of these drivers to converge. After three years of internal Quality Model development we were ready to share our commitment to our Quality Promises with our customers. We wanted to: • Effectively share our promise of service quality with our customers. • Contextualise our commitment to quality with relevant examples tailored for our customers. • Begin to experiment with our social media skills to engender
Quality Promise Timeline
OCTOBER & NOVEMBER
The Quality Principles which now defined our internal service were presented as Quality Promises for an external audience. These Promises would form the focus for us to exemplify and contextualize our services to our customers. The
3.3 The concept Our campaign concept centered around a plan which would: • Share our Quality Promises. • Exemplify and contextualise our promises with examples that would be engaging and relevant to each of our customer audiences. • Experiment with capturing impact and benefit. • Encourage conversation and sharing through our use of social media.
3.4 Encouraging team engagement with customers A key element of cultural change was to help staff realise that they had responsibility for their own customer audiences, with whom they could nurture conversations around service quality. We achieved this through a variety of approaches: • •
Delivering the marketing toolkit to all staff who ‘managed’ an audience. Delivering ‘conversational workshops’ to encourage staff to plan conversations and map them
Resources & Skills for Learning
Learning Spaces
JANUARY & FEBRUARY MARCH
3.2 Our Quality Promises
framework around which our Quality Campaign would sit.
Customer Care & Customer Support
SEPTEMBER
DECEMBER
customer. conversations. Begin to gather evidence of the impact or difference we make. Whilst we had delivered successful one-off campaigns in the past, this was to be our first year-long, servicewide campaign involving all staff and all aspects of our library service. •
Communication & Feedback
Equity
APRIL & MAY
Knowing Our Customers
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
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OUR QUALITY PROMISE CAMPAIGN •
•
onto the year-long conversational timeline. See Quality Promise Timeline below. Encouraging social-media skills development and peerto-peer support. All staff were encouraged to commit to trying ‘one new’ communication tool in their conversations. And to pass on these new skills to their colleagues. Encouraging staff to be imaginative in their capturing of impact and to try to capture ‘one difference’ with their own
audiences for each customer conversation.
3.5 Themed Monthly Campaign Our next decision was when it was best to hold these conversations. We knew from our Toolkit that messages were most effective when timely. We first established a year long Quality Promise Campaign Timeline positioning each promise in a relevant month to map onto key University and
Faculty events e.g. articulating the strength of our customer care when students are new in Spetember, or promoting the quality of our learning resources when students really begin to need them in October and November.
Liaison Librarians developed a more detailed Conversational Timeline to map out these conversations and promotions. See the Quality Promise Timeline below.
We then encouraged staff to ‘hang’ their conversations from these central themes by contextualising and exemplifying them with their own customer audiences. They were encouraged to support each other, stimulate ideas, share innovation and skills.
Our Quality Conversational Timeline
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QUALITY PROMISE BRAND CHARACTER
QUALITY PROMISE BRAND CHARACTER 4.1 Concept
Our aim was to define a visual concept which would: • Ensure that our Quality Promise brand is instantly recognisable. • Ensure that each individual Quality Promise or ‘service-strand’ can be represented as a stand-alone promise or can be combined as relevant with others. • Ensure that when displayed together, our Quality Promises brand depicts the holistic nature of our combined service-strands in making up the complete University Library Services offer and our overall commitment to service quality.
4.2 Character •
Bright, pleasing, light, cheerful, fresh, sunny – in keeping with our
• •
library spaces Friendly, welcoming, accessible, helpful, proactive, flexible, fluid, receptive Not stuffy, pretentious, traditional
4.3 The quality coloured dot
Each Quality Promise was defined by a colour and / or the motif of a coloured dot. This colour motif was embedded throughout the annual campaign. The intention being that customers could easily recognise the link between the promise colour and the promotional acitvities taking place.
4.4 Versatility of brand
There was a practical element to the choosing of our ‘dot’ brand. With our core aim of staff ownership and engagement in mind, we needed an image that was easily recreated and
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
re-purposed by staff of all skill levels. A design requiring an expert to create it, would have been pointless. All staff could apply a colour or a coloured dot to their publicity materials. Our brand also needed to be versatile – it needed to sit effectively on print mediums and with our online presence. To support staff further we: • • • •
Purchased new design software Encouraged and facilitated staff development and skills sharing Created templates for easy repurposing Created central repositories of images using Facebook and Pinterest
4.5 Suite of publicity materials
materials: • •
Library bag Library guides
4.6 Expanding Online Presence and Branding
Our new brand was applied to our web pages and onlline presence. • • • • • • •
Blog headers New Facebook and Twitter Accounts – branding Netvibes Pinterest Boards Videos/Interactive guides Monthly Promotions Promotion each month
The new Quality brand was initially applied to a suite of central publicity
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BRAND CONCEPT: Promises branded individually and together
Web icons used to illustrate each individual quality promise
Web icon showing how promises were branded together
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BRAND CONCEPT: General service-wide guides depicting how all service-strands/quality promises come together to make our holistic offer
2011-2012 Library Guide for Partner College Students with ‘Equity Green’ as the main accent colour
Lovely Learning spaces leaflet
2011-2012 Library Guide with ‘Customer Care Raspberry’ as the main accent colour
Business Card sized key contacts for students
Example of guides when folded to A3
Examples of themed subject and I.T Guides
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BRAND CONCEPT: library promotional items
Photograph showing our staff wearing the T-shirts they designed to be worn during freshers week - branded with the Quailty Promise ‘dot’ theme
Roving Support staff easy to ‘spot’ in their Quality Model branded T-shirts!
The ‘must have’ library bag, given free to students at the start of term Table display from Induction 2011
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BRAND CONCEPT: online presence branding (1)
Series of web icons created to promote library blogs and Quality Promise concept. Note the use of blue to illustrate the ‘Communication Promise’
Series of web icons created to promote library blogs and Quality Promise concept. Note the use of blue to illustrate the ‘Communication Promise’
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BRAND CONCEPT: online presence branding (2)
We also branded our Library Twitter with this image as the background. The image matched the Library Bag design and uses the ‘Feedback Red’ colour.
Our Library Facebook Banner (Cover Image) using the Communication and Feedback blue and red colour themes. We also incorporate ‘Equity Green’ into this banner and accompanying posters.
This is the Feedback Database icon that you will see throughout our Library and wider Student and Learning Support web pages. This also uses the ‘Feedback Red’ colour.
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5
QUALITY PROMISE CAMPAIGN THEMES
This section of the document contains multiple images. The quality of these images has been reduced in order to meet the document size requirements. You can view them at a higher resolution at our Pinterest page. Please see our Pinterest board which you’ll find at our blog: marketingexcellenceaward.wordpress.com
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CAMPAIGN THEME 1: CUSTOMER CARE & SUPPORT September to October 2011 Quality Promise Customer Care and Customer Support ‘Every time you talk to us you will meet approachable, knowlegeable, caring staff whose key motivation is to help you and to ensure you get the most out of library services’ ‘We will give you help and support to enable you to use library resources to best effect.’
Aim
Impact
Results
To emphasise not what we do but how friendly and warm we are when we do it.
‘Warmth of our welcome’ poll
We received an enthusiastic response to our poll and some valuable verbal feedback.
Timeliness To embed our warm, approachable, helpful ethos at the start of the new academic year How Through induction events, Meet & Greet Events, at Helpdesks and through library roving support. Supported by attractive publicity materials and key ‘warmth of welcome’ messages in all publications and induction materials.
A light-touch, fun poll inviting students to vote how warm/cold our library welcome is. Students could either vote online or post a pink (for warm) or blue (for not so warm) pom-pom at our voting station.
72% thought our welcome warm. This was not a scientific poll – it was the ethos affirmed by the asking that meant the most! We had very publicly proved to our customers that we cared about the quality of our welcome and the importance of our customer care.
web icon showing the result
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THEME 1: CUSTOMER CARE & CUSTOMER SUPPORT ‘How warm is our welcome?’ poll
A1 poster
Photo showing table display
A5 flyers
A0 trifold display
Photo showing table display
You will see that these materials were made using the ‘Customer Care Raspeberry’ colour
The video we made and embedded in our Facebook page to advertise our campaign
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CAMPAIGN THEME 2: RESOURCES & INFORMATION SKILLS October to November 2011 Quality Promises Resources and Information Skills ‘You will have access to appropriate resources when you need them.’ ‘You will have the opportunity to develop information literacy skills that will help you to use library services to your best advantage, support your academic progress and your future development’
Aim In response to National Student Survey feedback regarding textbook availability and reservation waiting times we wanted to promote our growing e-book collections. We wanted to participate in International Open Access Week and to promote the value of information literacy skills, in making the most of our resources. Timeliness October and November are the time when new and returning students begin to use our resources; International Open Access Week 24th October 2011 & Halloween.
Promotional tools included: •
RSS feeds of eBooks by subject and new eBooks added to stock from library catalogue to subject web pages
•
Shelf edge labels denoting heavily used items and linking to the e-version via QR codes
•
Stickers on text-books with an e-companion
•
Flyers placed in reserved items awaiting collection
•
Posters in all libraries and promotion via Subject web pages and blogs
How Our e-book campaign
Our International Open Access Week Campaign
Our aim was to avoid ineffective generic promotion by contextualising our messages to subject audiences. We matched our most reserved physical items to our e-book availability.
We promoted International Open Access Week by exemplifying open access resources in our diverse subject areas and to our research community using a Halloween theme.
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
An imaginative example was our Media Librarian’s Open Access Film Festival – showing lunchtime open access horror films on public screens in our Computing / Media Faculties and on screens in the libraries accompanied by Halloween sweets and treats. Viewing times were publicised on-line. Impact •
Our e-book RSS feed became the most popular search on the library catalogue.
•
Staff confidence in promoting e-books and open access increased.
•
Full e-book usage evaluation planned for Oct 2012 to compare with Oct 2011 usage.
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THEME 2: RESOURCES & SKILLS FOR LEARNING eBook Promotion
Web Icon for RSS feed
Stickers for Book Jacket Covers
Book Reservation Flyers
You will see that these materials were made using the ‘Resources Orange’ colour
A2 / A1 Poster
Book Shelf Edge Labels - customers scan QR code to access ebook versions on demand
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THEME 2: RESOURCES & SKILLS FOR LEARNING Open Access Week Promotion
A2 poster
Plasma Screen
‘Horrorfest’ themed dsiplay at St Peter’s Library
Art Library Display with Damien Hirst styled skull pumpkin
display stand decoration
‘Horrorfest’ themed movies at St. Peter’s Library
‘Horrorfest’ themed dsiplay via our Information Kiosks
You will see that these materials were made using the ‘Resources Orange’ and ‘Skills for Learning Yellow’ colours- very handy, as pumpkins are orange!
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CAMPAIGN THEME 3: LEARNING SPACES December 2011 Quality Promise Learning Spaces ‘Library spaces and virtual environments which are responsive to your learning needs.’
Aim To promote our newly refurbished 24/7 learning spaces which now provide a range of flexible, colourful and imaginative environments. To encourage customers to make best use of our various learning spaces.
Playing on a Christmas theme we presented our learning spaces as gifts to our students. We wrapped luxurious parcels representing gifts of ‘Quiet’ ‘Silent’ and ‘Social’ spaces. Pretty mix and match cards describing the full range of learning spaces spilled from the open parcels.
Timeliness
Impact
Our three-phase refurbishment came to fruition in Summer 2011. December is usually the time when students begin to use our learning spaces for serious study purposes for the first time and many are new to the concept of 24/7 and self-services. We felt these new spaces were a gift to our customers and wanted to tie it in to the Christmas/festive theme.
Festive Wishing Trees LED Christmas tree displays in each library invited customers to write a ‘Wish for our learning spaces’ on a bauble and hang it on the wishing tree. We responded to the wishes on the flip-side of the bauble. (Thanks to Sheffield Hallam Library staff whose wishing tree idea we adapted for this promotion.)
How Our ‘Lovely Learning Spaces’ leaflet which aimed to guide customer’s through our new spaces using ‘treasure-map’style. This was accompanied by new learning space web pages and interactive maps on touch screens. Our Gift of Learning Spaces
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
Festive Card Lines Customers were also invited to add a ‘wish’ to our festive feedback cards and peg them to Christmas card lines that ran the length of our newly refurbished library spaces. Examples of Customer Feedback ‘I like coming to Murray Library as it is bright and friendly’
‘The update decor, lighting and layout of the refurbished Murray Library creates a welcoming, inspiring and refreshing learning environment that will appeal to a range of learners.’ ‘Fantastic Library layout. Really love the colouring. Brightens my day. I want to spend more time here.’ ‘The top floor library refurbishment is terrific’ ‘It’s like a temple.’ Light and airy and also workable for all. ‘Very impressive, comfortable, welcoming facility for staff and students. Meets all student needs.’ ‘The studying environment is the best I have ever seen’ By openly sharing all customer comments we demonstrated our commitment to openness and conversation. We also very publicly shared both the positive feedback and the steps we were going to take to address any issues and to further improve our learning spaces.
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THEME 3: LEARNING SPACES (1)
Gift of Learning Spaces promotion and Christmas Wishing Tree
Lovely Learning Spaces leaflet
Example of display cards
Learning Spaces Info Cards
Photo showing customer christmas cards pegged on the Festive Card Line
Festive Card Line
A2 poster ‘what do you think of your library spaces?’. Uses the purple Learning Spaces Quality Promise theme
A2 poster ‘what do you think of your library spaces?’ Uses the red Feedback Quality Promise theme
‘Christmas Cards’ used by customers to write down their comments and peg them on the Festive Card Line
You will see that these materials were made using the ‘Feedback Red’ and ‘Learning Spaces Purple’ colours
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THEME 3: LEARNING SPACES (2)
A3 poster
Photos of the Christmas Wishing Trees and customer ‘2012 Library Wish’ comments at St. Peter’s Library
You will see that these materials were made using the ‘Feedback Red’ colour
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CAMPAIGN THEME 4: FEEDBACK & COMMUNICATION January & February 2011 Quality Promise Feedback & Communication ‘We will always consider your comments and suggestions and respond to you. We will take action and develop services where appropriate.’ ‘You will always have the information you need to ensure that you are aware of service developments that may affect you.’
Aim To promote our commitment to building relationships and nurture conversations with our customers in person, through our many new social media channels and Feedback Database (in itself the result of a Quality Model working group.) To convey our culture of openness and transparency in the sharing of our customer feedback. To increase our Facebook and Twitter followers. Timeliness Six months into the year; six months after the introduction of University Library Services Feedback Database; to help us prepare for the National Student Survey and Student Experience Survey. How To help students articulate the difference we make to them and to develop them as advocates for our service we developed our ‘Share your ideas with the library and watch them grow’ campaign. A very popular campaign with striking
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
posters and online branding. Using the theme of Spring and ‘new-growth’ we used attractive tractor and tree motifs to depict how customer ideas and feedback grow into new and better services for all. We promoted the benefits of following the library on Facebook and Twitter and the many ways there are to talk with us. Using feedback themes from the previous year we fed-back common feedback themes to customers, the new services that had been developed as a result of their engagement and why some suggestions had not been possible, making alternative suggestions instead. We concentrated on key service developments in the areas of our central Quality themes of: Resources; Ways We Help You More; Learning Spaces and Technology Impact Our spring feedback trees We re-used our feedback trees to invite
new ideas for our libraries. Customers were asked to ‘grow’ new ideas on the bare winter branches by writing them on new spring leaves and ‘growing’ them on the trees. We responded to their comments using blossom-shaped post-it notes to depict the concept that their ideas would blossom into new services. As a result our Facebook and Twitter followers increased considerably. Examples of our customer comments as a result of developing enquiry support through Facebook ‘Thanks sooooooo much for your quick reply. Got, it, tried it, it works. Felt like the 13th hour. We were running out of time depending on SBCS getting it for us before exams and cases. So had decided email and send an FB message to you all directly.’ Use Tweet ‘Off to my favourite place: UniOfSunLib. Hunting for James Joyce …’
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THEME 4: FEEDBACK & COMMUNICATION (2)
•
Photos of the spring wishing trees. We hung spring leaves to communicate the new services and resources we had made available to customers in response to their comments and requests.
•
Customers then ‘grew’ leaves themselves to tell us what they thought about this and to make new suggestions.
•
.. And then we added blossom notes to further feedback to customers to develop this feedback conversation further.
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THEME 4: FEEDBACK & COMMUNICATION (1)
A1 posters and matching plasma display screens images You will see that these materials were made using the relevant Quality Promise colours. The images depicted in the trees are all examples of the new services launched in these service areas as a result of customer conversations. E.g. the ‘New Resources’ poster sees images depicting our SURE Institutional Repository, eBooks etc. The ‘New Ways We Can Help’ poster depicts images of Facebook, Twitter, Roving Support with iPads, YouTube channels etc.
A1 poster
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Our Quality Promises Feedback & Communication
THEME 4: FEEDBACK & COMMUNICATION (2)
Series of ‘did you know’ information images for our small scale digital photo frames - promoting our new spaces and I.T. resources that have been developed as a result of customer conversations
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CAMPAIGN THEME 5: EQUITY March 2011 Quality Promise Equity “No matter where you are, when or how you reach us, we will strive to deliver an equivalent library service”
Aim
Timeliness
University Library Services delivers library services to many diverse customer groups – customers whose experience of library services differs according to their situation.
During March the majority of full-time, on campus students are occupied competing projects and preparing for exams. It was felt that this was a suitable time to promote the many bespoke services we offer for our different customer groups ie:
Our customers may have geographical differences – on campus, throughout the UK or worldwide; they may never visit or see our on campus libraries; they may use all of our services as a full-time undergraduate or perhaps only visit on a weekend or evening as a part-time student. We cannot promise that these customers all experience the ‘same’ library service but what we can strive to achieve is an ‘equitable’ experience. In addition to situational differences customers needs change throughout their University ‘journey’. We need our services to change alongside them so that their needs are always met.
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
• • • • • • • •
UK Partner College Customers Overseas Customers Researchers Customers with Disabilities Services to 6th form students Work-based Learners Visitors and members of the public Part-time students
How We produced a series of posters, plasma screen slides and online images based around the concept of
the ever changing shapes of clouds in the sky. As clouds constantly change shape so do the needs of our customers and so, in turn do our services, to ensure that we meet these needs. Each themed image highlighted the ‘package’ of services that we offer each ‘type’ of customer. The themes we chose were: • • • • • • • •
Studying on the Move Studying at College Studying at Home Studying in the Library at Night Studying Overseas Studying at Work Studying as a Postgraduate New Students
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THEME 5: EQUITY & KNOWING OUR CUSTOMERS
Series of plasma screens displayed within library buidlings. You will see that these materials were made using the ‘Knowing Our Customers Turquiose’ and ‘Equity Green’ colours.
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YOUR STUDY TAKES ON DIFFERENT SHAPES
AND SO DO WE
STUDYING AS A POSTGRADUATE Expert support Research Buddies Special Collections E-Journals E-Books SURE Institutional Repository 25 loans 65 Inter Library Loans Current research information Choice of learning spaces The British Library Access to 170 academic libraries facebook.com/UniOfSunLib
University Library Services
twitter.com/UniOfSunLib
Quality Promises Knowing Our Customers
CAMPAIGN THEME 6: KNOWING OUR CUSTOMERS April & May 2011 Quality Promise Knowing Our Customers ‘We will always treat you as an individual and where possible will deliver support and services to meet your specific needs’.
Aim To promote our commitment to our ‘Knowing Our Customers’ Quality Promise. This is a very important promise, as by getting to know our customers, we are better able to shape and deliver high quality services to meet their needs. Much of this work goes unseen by our customers so our aim was to very visibly undertake to get to know their needs better. We wanted to demonstrate how valuable it could be for customers to share their thoughts, ideas and suggestions – not just with us but with each other. In doing so we would also fulfill our original campaign aims of nurturing our customers to become advocates of our service and to be able to articulate the positive impact we have upon their University experience. In addition, we wanted to encourage our customers to interact with us more, to stay up to date with our conversations, to talk to us and share their thoughts and experiences.
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
In order to do this we wanted to encourage more customers to ‘Like Us’ on Facebook and ‘Follow Us’ on Twitter. Having investigated how commercial Facebook sites eg. Sainsbury’s, encouraged Facebook ‘Likes’ it was clear that we needed an incentive. As this was the final theme of our year long Quality Model Campaign we also wanted it to act as a ‘grand finale’ – hence the very generous prize of a new iPad 3. Timing On a very practical level – as we were beginning to plan for Induction 2012 we wanted to gather practical information about what new students would find it most useful to know. We felt that sharing what last year’s new students had found most helpful about the library and what they wished they had know would have greater impact with new students. Most of our students begin to ‘disappear’ from the middle of May so it was important to gather the feedback we needed throughout April.
How We invited customers to ‘Share something wonderful, win something wonderful’ by sharing on the Library Facebook page, ‘The one thing you’ve learned about the library that will help others.’ We promised that once we reached 101 ‘wonderful thing’ posts we would announce the winner of our iPad 3 and that we would use all of the feedback to help inform our 2012 induction messages. On reaching 101 posts we invited library staff to shortlist and choose their favourite entry. Much to her genuine delight the iPad was won by a very grateful 1st year Art and Design Student - this is her winning ‘one thing’: ‘My one thing ... well there are many things that I have learned and love about The University of Sunderland’s Libraries and their Services, but the most important is how helpful and friendly the staff are. There is nothing worse than going somewhere and feeling on
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CAMPAIGN THEME 6: KNOWING OUR CUSTOMERS your own with no-one around to give you a hand or second opinion, but Sunderland Uni Libraries are the total opposite. If you have an idea you want to talk about, want a hand finding a particular book or even just want a friendly chat, there is always someone who will find the time for you. And being a first year student myself, I find this is exactly what you need in your first year of Uni. :)’ Impact The ‘Knowing Our Customers’ Campaign proved a very powerful campaign one from both a customer and staff perspective. The campaign seemed to capture our customers’ imagination and they participated very enthusiastically. The fact that we asked for a good or useful thing that customers have learned about the library resulted in
very visible post after positive post of how helpful the library had been, all over our Facebook pages. This positive reinforcement proved a powerful and valuable promotional tool in further nurturing positivity. This helped to achieve our initial Quality Campaign objective of encouraging our customers to become positive advocates for our service and to be able to articulate the positive impact that our services have on their University experience. Customers seemed to enjoy being included in sharing advice with the new student intake and enjoy being in a position of knowledge and experience. The fact that we actively included them helped reinforce our commitment to the Quality Promise of ‘Knowing Our Customers.’ On a practical level our Facebook ‘Likes’ increased by over 100 in a very short time. As the majority of
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
these students were first or second year students we now have them ‘captured’ and are able to begin new conversations with them when they return to University in September. The campaign also had a very positive impact on staff culture. We decided to offer an iPad 3 to the winner as we were keen to offer a useful and generous prize. It was another positive step that we were able to pay for the iPad using revenue generated from arduous collection management activity on the part of our staff. It was a very positive ‘end’ to our campaign that staff were able to see a student so delighted with the prize that their hard work had generated.
of ownership around this campaign theme. Staff found the outpouring of such positive feedback and the genuine delight of our winner very rewarding and an inspiring culmination to our 2011-2012 Quality Model Campaign. Through our final campaign theme positive conversations had certainly been nurtured! The winner, one very happy student the best impact measure of all!
The fact that we invited our staff to select our winner, and that the team at our Art & Design Library were tasked with presenting the prize further increased a valuable sense
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THEME 6: KNOWING OUR CUSTOMERS Share One Wonderful Thing promotion
Facebook cover used for duration of theme 6
Plasma screen image
Photo used to promote prize on library Facebook page
Web icon
Promotional flyers
A1 poster
You will see that these materials were made using the ‘Knowing Our Customers Turquiose’
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THEME 6: KNOWING OUR CUSTOMERS Share One Wonderful Thing promotion (1)
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THEME 6: KNOWING OUR CUSTOMERS Share One Wonderful Thing promotion (2)
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WIDER IMPACTS, FIGURES & FURTHER ADVENTURES...
CAMPAIGN BUDGET Adventures in Conversation Campaign: Budget Breakdown and Print Runs Staff Costs University Library Services Quality and Marketing Team comprises Kay Grieves (Quality and Marketing Manager) and Michelle Halpin (Quality and Marketing Co-ordinator) Our Quality Promises Campaign and all campaign design work were produced specifically by this Quality and Marketing Team. Our Liaison Librarian Team also contributed time to the campaign. All Campaign and design work work was carried out by the Quality and Marketing Team and colleagues. This fell within the normal working remit of the teams so incurred no extra staff costs.
Publicity Material Costs The Quality and Marketing Team have an allocated publicity budget of £7k. The only campaign costs that were incurred were to cover the cost of: • • •
Printing Cotton bags iPad 3 (presented as ‘One Wonderful Thing’ prize.) The cost of this iPad 3 was not covered by the publicity budget but by income generated from the sale of discarded items (in compliance with our Collections Management Policy 2012)
Individual print run costs are unavailable but the overall expenditure for the year 2011-2012 was £5445.
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
Print Runs Sept: How warm is our welcome? • Posters • Table displays • Flyers Oct/Nov: Open Access and E-Books • Posters • Flyers • Stickers • Shelf edge signs Dec: Learning Spaces • Posters • Flyers Jan/Feb: Feedback & Communication • Posters April/May: Knowing our Customers • Posters • Flyers • iPad 3
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PROFESSIONAL IMPACT Professional impact of our Quality Promise Campaign Throughout this submission we have made reference to the impact our campaign has had on our customer relationships and service culture. It should also be noted that our Marketing Toolkit, Quality Model and Adventures in Conversation Campaign have also had a noted professional impact. How Do You Like Your Eggs in the Morning: 7 Step Strategic Marketing Toolkits Since its inception in 2008 our Toolkit has been enthusiastically greeted by
library services throughout the UK.
Customer Service Excellence Award.
Conference Presentations
We receive many requests for delivery of our workshop and additional requests for advice and guidance on strategic marketing.
The Toolkit has also been shared at the following national conferences:
•
UCR Conference Newcastle 2012
•
International Internet Librarian Conference, Olympia, London. October 2012
To date we have shared our Toolkit with staff from approximately 90 library services and feedback has been 100% positive. “It lived up to all (and more) of my expectations … it was one of the best I have been too.’ Delegate ARLIS Conference Goldsmiths, London 2012 The Toolkit has been applied to many purposes from service restructuring, to web page design to planning for the
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
• • •
UCR Conference Exeter 2010 UCR Conference Newcastle 2012 ARLIS Conference London 2012
Quality Promise Campaign Our QualityPromise Campaign is also having professional impact: •
Increasing professional Followers of our Pinterest presence
•
Invitations to visit a number of UK libraries to share our experience
Awards •
CILIP PPRG Gold Award Winners 2012-2013
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FURTHER ADVENTURES IN CONVERSATION We are about to launch our Quality Promise Campaign 2012-2013 and we are looking forward to building upon the successes of our 2011-2012 campaign and using what it has taught us.
the different strands of our service and to align our staff development activities to better support staff in sharing our key messages and objectives: •
2012-2013 Central Publicity Materials Our central publicity materials have been redesigned for the new academic year. Further developingour Quality Model theme, this year we have also experimented with the medium of ‘infographics.’ See our Pinterest Board ‘All new Library branding 2012-2013’ for examples.
2012-2013 Nurturing Customer Conversations Quality Model Campaign This year’s campaign aims to further embed our commitment to our Quality Promises at a deeper level throughout
The central month by month Quality Model Campaign will be repeated and refreshed for the new year. The benefit of this central campaign is a consistent service-wide approach which maintains momentum and gives all staff a central theme from which to ‘hang’ their own campaigns.
•
Subject Liaison staff have created a new timeline of Quality-based conversations enabling us to contextualise and embed our Quality messages at a ‘subjectsupport’ level.
•
Staff with management responsibilities for key customer groups ie. Overseas learners, partner college students etc have created a timeline of Quality-based conversations enabling us to embed our Quality messages at a ‘customer-type’ level.
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
•
Substantial planning is in place to ensure that our front-line services reflect, support and strengthen these quality messages through day-to-day conversations with our customers.
Staff Development Social-Media/Learning Technology development for all subject liaison staff All liaison staff are encouraged to try ‘one new way’ per term of holding a conversation with customers ie. Through the creation of interactive video, LiveChat surgeries etc and ‘one new way’ of capturing impact. Staff are encouraged to be proactive in developing these new skills and in supporting each other in sharing their skills.
quality campaigns eg. Accessing e-books and promoting the benefits of our services in their conversations. Staff Development Campaign Our front-line staff development campaign will this year ‘inter-lock’ with our Quality Model Campaign. Staff will support and train each other (with the input of external speakers as required) to prepare for Quality Model Conversations and to provide quality support to our customers eg. Subject Liaison Librarians to deliver training to front-line staff on use of subject resources; IT staff to share the benefits of specialist software etc.
Staff ‘Quality’ planning meetings All teams are engaged in proactive ‘quality planning’ meetings with the aim of encouraging front-line teams to develop in advance, the skills required to support customers in our monthly
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CONCLUSION Through our Adventures in Conversation: Quality Promise Campaign 2011-2012 we achieved our initial aim of successfully delivering a year-long co-ordinated campaign.
the experience of our customers. •
Nurturing meaningful conversations and a culture of friendliness, openness and honesty.
•
Articulating the true benefits of our many services and helping students use them to best effect.
Our campaign has enriched our customer relationships by:
•
Developing our customers as true advocates of our service.
•
Placing our customers firmly at the heart of all that we do.
•
•
Explicitly demonstrating our commitment to service quality and
Effectively capturing the impact of our services on our customers experience and enabling our customers to articulate that impact.
The experience has been an extremely valuable and enriching one for University Library Services, Sunderland.
articulate the impact that we have on our customers experience.
Our campaign has enriched our staff culture by: •
Ensuring our staff place our customers at the heart of all that we do.
•
Supporting self-development, sharing and peer-to-peer skills support.
•
Developing ownership and responsibility.
•
Inspiring creativity and imagination.
•
Encouraging self-starting innovation and service development.
Our campaign has University wide impact
•
Engendering openness and honesty in our customer conversations.
•
Enabling us to demonstrate and
•
As a result of the success of our strategic marketing approach, the University Executive have invited ULS to share their approach with the intention of informing University wide practice.
We hope that you have enjoyed reading our Campaign portfolio and thank you for considering our entry for the 2012 CIM Marketing Excellence Award.
Adventures in Conversation: Our Quality Promise Campaign
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CIM MARKETING EXCELLENCE AWARD ATTACHMENTS Please visit our blog at http://marketingexcellenceaward.wordpress.com where you will find: Our University of Sunderland Library Services Pinterest Board containing high res branding images from our campaign The ‘7 Step Marketing Toolkit’ Workbook and accompanying example powerpoint Link to the University of Sunderland Library Services Facebook Page Link to the University of Sunderland Library Services Twitter Page Link to the University of Sunderland Library Services Web Page
Other sources of information: Grieves, Kay, ‘How Do You Like Your Eggs?’ CILIP Update , March 2012 CILIP PPRG Marketing Excellence Gold Award 2012: http://www.cilip.org.uk/news-media/Pages/news120920.aspx
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TALKING TO US University Library Services University of Sunderland The Murray Library Chester Road Sunderland SR1 3SD University Library Services Online http://library.sunderland.ac.uk University Library Services Facebook http://facebook.com/UniOfSunLib University Library Services Twitter http://twitter.com/UniOfSunLib
Kay Grieves Quality and Marketing Manager University Library Services University of Sunderland
email kay.grieves@sunderland.ac.uk telephone 0191 515 3273 Michelle Halpin Quality and Marketing Co-ordinator University Library Services University of Sunderland
email michelle.halpin@sunderland.ac.uk telephone 0191 515 2417
University Library Services Pinterest http://pinterest.com/UniOfSunLib
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