This presentation addresses customer service training by growing and nurturing empathy and empowering staff to navigate the gray areas in our policies. Using storytelling and group interaction, we will look at special and challenging situations such as code of conduct violations and difficult patrons. Discover how understanding our own implicit biases and not assuming the worst of our patrons can help you offer consistent customer service to everyone we serve.
Date Recorded: 8/25/21
Format: Archived YouTube Video
Presenter: Molly LaBadie, Deputy Director / Delaware County District Library
Molly Meyers LaBadie has been in Libraries for almost 20 years. She was lucky to have four of those as a Library Trainer allowing her to train staff in customer service and spend time learning what really made a difference. Currently, as a Deputy Director, she finds that empathy for both staff and patrons is a powerful tool in offering exceptional customer service.
Resources:
- Empathetic Approach to Customer Service The Booklist pdf
- Empathetic Approach to Customer Service presentation pdf







Are you in charge of creating content for your library’s social media accounts? Do you feel like you are stuck with what new and exciting things you can post that will engage your followers? Are you not even sure where to start or look to create graphics that excite? Wondering if hash tagging is all it’s cracked up to be? Join Jenn Bartlett, Head of Reference and Adult Services of the Manchester Public Library, and lead of their social media as she discusses these topics. Catch Bartlett on her own personal social media as The Board Game Librarian.
Athens (Georgia) Regional Library is one of the first public libraries to refocus a social work program toward a trauma-informed framework. This session presents replicable steps in providing library services, designing and implementing policies, and supplying holistic training for staff utilizing a trauma-informed lens. As libraries are asked to do more with less, this session highlights easily attained methods of becoming trauma-informed and establishing a system which reflects the assets of the community and organizational values. 1hr / 1 LEU.