A lovely piece of advice on customer service... thank you, Bilabial.

We have this idea of customer service being drummed into us at present... here's a good comment I found...

"I sell yarn, and teach knitting, which is an admittedly unrelated part of retail. But. I suspect some things I have learned will be helpful to you.

1. Remember what the person likes. This takes time. Yesterday I was able to pull out just exactly the type of pattern that a customer was hoping to find (Her description: a cardigan for a baby girl, fun enough to make for twins. This could have been any infant cardigan pattern in the store.) Had I not paid any attention to her in previous visits she would have had to look through two huge binders of baby sweater patterns to decide for herself. As it was I was able to hand her one binder to browse while I pulled out the pattern from the other. She was impressed and because she trusts me she didn't look for something "more perfect."

2. Also of your repeat customers: remember little things about their lives, if they've shared them. Don't ask complete strangers anything personal, but if they share unprompted they're likely to be impressed if you remember. Again, this takes practice. If Jack is always buying ping pong balls whenever the grandkids come into town and mentions that they're having a birthday party for the six year old this weekend, and that's why he's getting more than usual (is it obvious I know nothing about sporting goods? I thought so.), remember that when he comes in again.

3. If your company has a distasteful policy (doesn't take AmEx, doggies are not allowed in, returns have time limitations) that the customer is (knowingly or otherwise) attempting to get around, be polite about it. This wording works well for me, "I'm sorry Jane, we can't accept American Express, but we do take Visa, Mastercard, or Cash." This lets them know what their options are, and prevents them from pulling out a checkbook or Discover card as option two.

4. Don't dress like a slob. This is kind of hard for me sometimes. It means that I have to stop wearing shoes once they look the least bit beat up. My favorite pair of jeans with the busted belt loop stays at home, and I brush my hair. It's amazing how much more seriously people take me when I take an extra moment to assess myself in the mirror before I leave the house. I tend to dress a little "older" because I look so young. But it helps reinforce the fact that I didn't learn to knit last year.

5. Know everything you can about your area of expertise. For me this means reading all the current knitting magazines, being involved in a huge online community, practicing different techniques, and reading the blogs of famous knitters. It also means that I try as many different yarns as I can get my hands on, even many we don't stock at my store. This means when a customer brings me a pattern and says, "I want to make this, help me find a yarn," I can say, "Oh, I've used the Claudia's Handpainted Sock Yarn (It's actually called Fingering, but that's just kind of funny), I really like it and we carry the Cherry Tree Hill, which uses the same base yarn and comes in lots of great colors." What I mean is, be able to offer a comparison. Obviously, I know it's easier for me to try out a $5 or even $20 ball of yarn than for you to run a mile in multiple pairs of $150 shoes. That is why I say "everything you can" and not "absolutely everything there is to know."

6. Keep track of every single question that customers ask you for, say a week. Note which ones come up the most. Find and know the answers to all the questions. Repeat every few months. If a question comes up about a particular product (or class of products) with surprising regularity, don't wait for it to be asked! For us it's machine washability. I nearly always ask people up front if they have washability requirements for the garment they're making. If they say yes then I don't need to show them Alpaca Silk blends. If they pick up un-washable products I can say, "that would work with your gauge, but it would have to be hand washed." And our customers appreciate this. I'm sure there's something related in sporting goods.

7. Bonus - be able to give basic directions in the neighborhood of your store. How to get there from major streets, as well as a few decent places to eat. You will be amazed at how often you notice people asking for this kind of information once you're actually prepared to give it.
posted by bilabial at 12:14 PM on July 23 2008 on Ask Metafilter, in response to the question "How can I be a better retail employee who is helpful, but does not annoy you?"

Karting in Hamilton!

Shelfari update

When looking at A Dog's Life, a blog inclined to appeal to Sissi, I saw a lovely bookshelf for Shelfari books, and acted straight away....
I have joined Shelfari before, through Facebook, so all it took was linking a new Shelfari account to my Facebook application (which I haven't really enjoyed, or certainly not as much as Visual Bookshelf - see below), and now I have a lovely wooden shelf with a few books on it in my side panel ... Very nice. I like the "Reader's Advisory" aspect, with the editorial reviews, 'cos I don't often feel inclined to comment on my books.
I must admit that Visual Bookshelf imports whatever I put on LibraryThing straight away, while Shefari just seemed to be having a bad day, so VB remains the favourite for now, for both display and ease of manipulation. Give it a go and have fun!

Blogs galore

Does anyone know of other 'blog' sites out there? We have explored lots of stuff through the Learning 2.0, but I was intrigued the other day to see other 'blog' sites.... like Blogtown, and Wordpress, on which Blogtown is based....
I also don't know enough about other places such as LiveJournal.
All interesting and with their own rules and ways of getting one's daily grind into the ether capacious.....
Quite interesting - "messing about in blogs".

Label Clouds!

Still to be perfected but wow! I managed, thanks to phydeaux3! And seeing a label cloud on the toyshop. And just copying and pasting html text.... oh boy I hope this lasts. Now watch - it's not quite as I want it... so I'll have to find a way of changing it...
have a look down at the end of the sidebar....

Carrying On...

Well, I don't know how this is going to go, because the time factor is a biggie now, but I had a quick look at Catatonic Chataholic's blog (beautiful) and she's still having fun out there in the world of web 2.0, or 2.1...
So when I get the chance... (it's now 12:20 and I'm a pumpkin) I would like to see where she's been to find more challenges. No promises about doing them - just it looks as though it could be good.
Learning 2.1

WOW - the 23rd thing...

Oh dear - I feel as though I have finished in a bit of a rush, but there was a lot of learning in there!
Loved: Blogs. Even if someone said - "What are you doing that for, it's just a diary online?" Well, yes it is, and it is a huge time waster, but it was a great way to discover the various aspects of dear old Web 2.0. I also enjoyed the formatting side of the blogging business. Making things "pretty"... and I am absolutely stunned by some of the fantastic blogs out there! Creativity rules! And not one the same.
I also enjoyed finding out more about Flickr and Picasa, and using pictures ... How much of it I have retained is another question, of course.
And del.ici.ous to sort out our untidy generic computers! Whew!

Bloglines. This is a side I think I will return to. For my own benefit. I have only a few sites that I visit for 'updates', and this is one way to go. I realise that there are other ways of getting feeds to one's internet toolbar (my computer at home keeps on suggesting Firefox's Bookmarks) but at least I am now aware of that. I always wondered what RSS was like...

Didn't enjoy: The Time it all took. It does take time, and I don't know how we are going to avoid that when we start doing more of this with our library work. I have commented on this before. Enough said. One can only type so fast. (except maybe Catatonia...)

Thoughts: I can see ways in which each of the aspects we looked at could be used in our work - even zoho or google docs... Library 2.0 is another way of communicating, and is evolving all the time. The danger in that is not being wide-awake enough to the trends, and perhaps catching the wrong bus... but nothing ventured...!

eBooks and Kindle...

Well - how good to find Stephen Leacock on Project Gutenberg! I can relax now, in case MS ever decides to get rid of "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town".... Useful! And free! I wonder! That's VERY special.
Now - kindles for our librarians? To hand out to patrons? Instead of the newspaper each day? I don't know. More virtual library!

Podcasts....

I did it - I found Nancy Pearl and put a feed in my Bloglines so that I can keep up with what she has to say about books she's read! I do enjoy using Bloglines to do this sort of thing, and I just need to find out how to get Kim Hill on there too... because my Reading Group all listen to her...!

Youtube

Mr Bean at the library.....
This was relatively easy to do - searched for 'library', found Mr Bean, and then clicked on the 'embed' information and pasted it into the post...
Uses in libraries? As a part of creating the virtual library? Yes. Nothing to stop us putting storytime on the internet.... via our webpages for kids... or as a record of what we have done. Or in "How to use stuff" as in 'searching particular databases', or 'signing up'.
Virtual Library, here we come!

Web 2.0... Awards

Well, I started this post a while ago, and since then I have been busy - almost back at work full-time, and so without time to go a-blogging or webbing...
Still, some of it has become a little addictive. At this rate, I can see the next household purchase will have to be a laptop and wireless connections...!

I have used, since before we started, Facebook. So I thought I would see if I could 'evaluate' it in some way...
FOR: Privacy. I am intrigued by the way one can limit who can see what. I realise there was a breach of privacy recently with the launch of the new Facebook, but it is a risk one takes. I could choose to have my friends "invisible" from prying eyes, for example, but I find that I like being contacted by people from the Zimbabwean diaspora, and if that is a way to find friends, then I'm going to leave it like that. It's a choice, and they certainly warn against exposing all of your information.
Contact. I like being 'found' by people from long ago! Even if I then don't take up their offers of friendship (or they don't take up mine...)
News. There are some things I wouldn't have learned about without Facebook, like the death of a colleague in that almost contact-less country of Zim. And the notifications are great.
Groups. Have a look at the Zimbabwe Wildlife ones, and of course libraries... Some of the latter are worth it, and exclusive, and others are great, and lead one into the library itself. Only problem, you do have to sign up to do this, but then again, it is a kind of privacy issue.
AGAINST: Time. Well, time-wasting, of course. It's a kind of all or nothing scenario.
Privacy. Potentially always a problem, as the related article suggests, and some of my family won't go near it. Yet I do agree with the comment that it is perhaps the 'more classy' one of the various social networking sites.

I can see an application in the library setting - Reading Groups, Young Adult groups? Liaison between staff members/library branches about stuff...
It may be a little slow to start off with, but it could be done - the person checking the 'generic' email could check the social networking site too, for example. I do think we may have a way into the lives of those people who don't come to the library, through these kinds of social networking sites.

Video games....

Herewith a video - now why did the post ask me for a title and then give me selections, while I couldn't type in what I wanted...????
This is some of my family playing tennis in Johannesburg... Beautiful winter weather, not so? Noisy birdies too.

Labels...

As mentioned before, I like the idea of a 'word cloud' of labels... as in the Paper Cuts blog from the NYT. The best I can do for now is Blogger's label list (see near the end of my sidebar). I found a blog called betabloggerfordummies which looked as though it had the solution, which I was still unable to use...
If anyone has any ideas out there...

first go

Well, here goes with a "Zoho" document.
I was looking for an emoticon labelled trepidation, but I must have missed it!
I have uploaded stuff to Googledocs before, but it didn't look as good as it did "on the ground", so I kind of left it alone. Also - it wasn't as though I could transfer all my stuff there quickly. It took a while. Never mind, I'll have another look another day...
♥
- the inserts are easy to access!
(but the smiley cool emoticon didn't come out...)
And the text colours and formatting... although I need to find a formatting icon soon so I can watch what's going on...
I have just had to work out the saving and deleting thingy... Not bad.
This could work when editing stuff for insertion into one's blog...

- a picture of Mexico, courtesy of Reynaldofineart.

Week 7 or Thing 17...!

Bebo, Myspace, Facebook.... I have a Facebook page, since about January this year. With about 28 friends. I belong to seven groups. I have a Scrabulous application and I still can't decide between Shelfari and Visual Bookshelf.... It's one good way of keeping up with the diaspora of Zimbabweans, and relatives who don't send Christmas cards or emails. I don't think I want to use it for anything else.
However it looks really good, being used by a library... Certainly a way of communicating that would appeal to many young people out there. Just think of the Learn.net usage after school! As mentioned before, I approve of both Hennipin County Library on Facebook and Auckland City Libraries on Bebo. I looked for other library users on Facebook, and came up with a few! There's a Library 2.0 Interest group on Facebook with over 6000 members, just in case you'ld like to subscribe to yet another discussion board or site... and plenty more groups out there with similar interests.

Library 2.0?

Hmm...
I like the idea. I am enjoying this "blogging", and I like the concepts I have seen from Hennipin County Library on Facebook and Auckland City Libraries on Bebo, that libraries can use.

For public libraries? In reading the OCLC newsletter articles, I am happy with quite a bit of what they suggest. I think that we can do great things with Library 2.0. I don't think we can afford to let it go by without adopting many of the techniques and patterns for our own use. I like the idea of wikis run by libraries, for example, and even a kind of interactive catalogue. We have a start with that at the moment - "ratings". (Out of interest, just how much is this used, I wonder?)

So, I have a few reservations, which could be dealt with by being particularly careful in our utilisation of the wonders of Web 2.0.

1. I don't know how our website 'hits' compare with our through-the-door figures. It would be good to have an idea. And I am not talking about all the libraries, but about our library in particular. A "destination of choice". People happily use the web to help them find what they want, but they still come to the library for the "serendipity", the perchance discovery of a tactile book. Something that feels smooth and just the right kind of weight for a late night read, or a summer beach book. Something that has the right size print.... Amazon tries to do this with its "search insides"...but there are still people who would rather escape the rest of the cyberworld and return to "ye olde ways" of picking up a book and looking at it at times. Libraries have a place here too. Interesting to see that Dr Wendy Schultz seems to feel that we will get there again one day in Library 4.0.
   
2. Beware the time factor. We may be 'free-ing' up staff to get out into the library to work with the people, but they may just have to pop back to the workstation to work on the wiki/myspace and respond to all those comments... 2.0 interface is a great thing, but to produce quality stuff will take a bit of time. I presume that it goes without saying that we want quality?
3. And I think we need to know a whole lot more about our customers before we devote too much precious time and energy to this. The ratings? The website hits? What happened to Airpac? Do customers want 'more' or do they want 'different'? Must we "tell" them what they want? We're going to have to get Big Brotherly in order to find out. Are they ready for that too?

Technorati

I hit Technorati on a bad day, but I signed up my blog and inserted a widget! ... I loved their error messages tho' : "Doh! The Technorati Monster escaped again." and "Sorry! We have a zillion pages, but not that one. The good news is that you've successfully discovered our spartan, but friendly Error page." from the link from Manukau's paragraph about claiming one's blog...

I saw the differences between the searches, I had a look at Boing Boing and I actually enjoyed the concept - more so than my previous post on del.icio.us. Maybe it was prettier? I also, one day, want a tag cloud... have a look at the one on Paper Cuts, the NYTimes Blog about books.

del.icio.us or not

Dare I say it... del.icio.us is not really my thing. I had a good look at the PLCMCL's bookmarks, and tried to find my way through the rather confusing searches.
But, I have a hard enough time trying to think of good enough 'reviews' or tags for books I have read, for example, without trying to interpret other people's. I worry that I cannot think of enough 'tags' to catch all the possibilities that might be out there. I am so glad cataloguers exist.

BUT I can see that there will be people who will enjoy this kind of random exercise. I can see the potential for finding sites that others have tagged, but I will just use other people's and I don't need to create my own. Another case of the time factor again?

Potential for Readers Advisory.
Potential for tidying up the huge (and clumsy) list of 'favourites' on our generic computers.

It's a Wiki world we live in...putting my blog on our wiki.

This exercise was a little full of trial and error.

I have - once - in the long distant past - had access to a Wiki, after a course we went on run by James Herring in 2006. It was a rushed thing, done at the end of the day, and kind of tumbled into non-use fairly soon, I believe. The old address is still there, from the emails we used to receive: nzworkshops wiki. I must admit, his whole course was fascinating, but we never had enough time... (isn't this always the way...?)

I am happy with Wikipedia. It is often a great way to at least find out a little about the thing you're looking for, if you know nothing about it. Then you can at least spell it correctly when you go looking for it in the more 'reputable' resources.
By the way...here is an article from PC Pro magazine, 9th June 2008, about Encyclopaedia Britannica in which it describes
"rolling out a new system allowing readers to potentially contribute to articles....

Britannica has long been a vocal critic of Wikipedia's user-generated content, and has repeatedly attacked the accuracy of its articles. Unsurprisingly then, it is keen to stress that its new website will not be following the Wiki-model, describing it "as a collaborative process but not a democratic one.""

This could be a little more like it. An idea similar to the update on the Library Success wiki we have been directed to:

"Update! Because of vandalism problems, e-mail confirmation is now required. Please enter your e-mail address when you create an account and you will be sent a link to confirm your address (after which you will be able to edit the wiki). .... Sorry for the inconvenience."

Perhaps this is the way for wikis to go, if they want to improve their general reception and use? Or else it is the way for reputable sources to go, as EB has done. I like their comment, taken from the same PC Pro article:

"At the new Britannica site, we will welcome and facilitate the increased participation of our contributors, scholars, and regular users, but we will continue to accept all responsibility of what we write under our name. We are not abdicating our responsibility as publishers or burying it under the now-fashionable wisdom of the crowds."

So - I have been onto the Manukau Libraries wiki, and entered my blog address under the favourite blogs page, and taken a link from the Library Success wiki to my Bloglines account, and I'll see if we ourselves have the time to develop anything worthwhile of our own in the future. You see, it is DEFINITELY a "time and commitment" thing. It's not worth doing in a half-hearted fashion, like the "practice wiki" for that course way back in 2006...

More picture fun...

My attempt at a Trading Card... I think I have had enough fun with pictures to last me a life-time...!

Technology...

Technology! What a vast and fast-moving part of our lives. A small step for man and a giant leap for mankind. The computer that put the men on the moon was smaller than our first 286....
And telephones. Communicating...
I can remember having one of those party-line telephones, with a handle on the side that you had to turn for short rings and long rings, and one long one to get the exchange. Mind you, you could then give the person on the exchange the list of numbers you wanted for that day, and they acted a little like a secretary, and 'phoned you back when they'd reached them... I haven't found such a good service on my cell-phone yet...
Cell-phones. Well, back in the bad days in Zim they were a god-send when the kids and I eventually found petrol queues on our way home, and could 'phone our husband and father and let him know where we were, so that he didn't think we had been taken out by the 'war verterans' who gathered every evening on the side of the road. Mind you, I still feel like answering them with, "How did you know I was here?", now that we live in a more peaceful place. They can be a little intrusive, perhaps? And now they have developed even further and I haven't even caught up yet!

Other thoughts on technology :-

• One hopes to see great developments that bear the future of our planet in mind - some form of "fuel-burning" technology, that will provide us with all our 'needs', which doesn't strip our planet of any more natural resources.
• Technology put to good use. Beneficial.
• Technology that we control, not which controls us. I do wonder, sometimes, just who or what is in charge... don't you?
  

Somehow, I think that along the way we have lost the patience, good manners and charm required when we had the party-line telephone, and the operator on the other end. I don't think 'technology' has any answers for that.

Views

A Picasa slideshow

Flickr...2

ancient waterways 2
Originally uploaded by floccinouci

Finally getting somewhere with Flickr. Let's hope this works!

Flickr..

Well, I am trying with Flickr, and it is becoming more user-friendly. However, there seems to be a waiting period and I quote: (see their FAQ on tags)
"When you sign up for Flickr, your new account is marked as "pending," until Flickr administrators review it to make sure you aren't posting offensive images or junk downloaded from the Web. When your account is pending, your photos won't show up in public photo lists, like Everyone's Photos, or pages that show all photos tagged with a specific tag".
So it's not as 'instant' as all that and I must be patient. Will let you know how I get on...

The fun part ... Old style photos...

This was fun, but randomly selecting photos didn't always work out... people in sunglasses look just wierd in 'old style photos'.
Here's an attempt. I used http://labs.wanokoto.jp/olds.

Bookshelf below!

Now this was fun... partly because I found LibraryThing frustrating because it was so s..l..o..w... (I have just been there again and it said it's experiencing overload... I am not surprised.)
But, I belong to Facebook, and I have tried out two bookshelf applications. I like Visual Bookshelf... and look! I can enter the books I have read there, on Facebook, and they update to a window in my dear old Blog! I don't have to everything twice...
And to enter them on Visual Bookshelf I just have to paste in the title from an exported version of my reading history, and click on a cover that matches the one I read, mark it already read... I can then go to a list of my books and rate them if I wish....
So that was a relief.
Mind you, if LibraryThing gets a little easier to manage, I can import books from it into Visual Bookshelf...
and then - after all of that, I found an [old] blog called The Official Lair of Daniela. There are posts to this comment of course, with more comparisons... so have fun if you have the time...

Rollyo... roll yer own...

Well, it took a while, but I think I have got an idea of what happens with this search engine now. Some of it could be really useful, especially if you wish to tailor your own searches and then let people benefit from them I tried to put together the sites I have used with my family tree searchings... Try it, if it works!
I must admit, I don't know how much I would use this, as I tend to have only a few sites I go to, and I think that I prefer the rss feeds and my own blog for keeping my useful information up to date...
(Much later!) I have also added a Rollyo search bar to the bottom of Sissi's place...

Wordle Fun

October...

Bloglines?

Well, let's hope this is what is required:
http://www.bloglines.com/public/floccinauci
Like my friend Chinese Annie, I hope you like what I have chosen so far...

Time ... Inconsequential Trivialities.

... I feel a little like Leo Sayer ... anyone remember him?
from "The Show Must Go On"
"I’ve wasted time
Wasted, wasted, oh so much time."
Not that it really is a waste - it's great learning a little of what a lot of people know already, but it just takes a lot of time. One gets caught up with Inconsequential Trivialities. (And you thought IT stood for Information Technology!)

LIKES
I am impressed with the Bloglines. I like seeing what I am interested in all coming together. How to make it work for others as well as myself.

NOT SURE ABOUT
I went wandering into Picasa through a link which said "see all your pictures on Picasa..." or similar, and got trapped, or so I felt. Any blog pictures land up there, and I am unsure of how to delete these 'albums'. Oh well! Lost in the ether capacious!

Lightning!

From Metvuw: A lightning bolt taken from Tony's lounge window facing north during the storm on the 25 June 2008. Taken from George Point Road in Onerahi, Whangarei looking north. Persistence pays as he stayed up till 02:30 to get this image.

Poetry Day...

...and in light of the fact that we are heading into poetry day...
this reminds me of all those Latin tenses...


HOW I BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM AIX TO GHENT (OR VICE VERSA)
RJ Yeatman & W C Sellar

I sprang to the rollocks and Jorrocks and me
And I galloped, you galloped, we galloped all three...
Not a word to each other; we kept changing place,
Neck to neck, back to front, ear to ear, face to face;
And we yelled once or twice, when we heard a clock chime,
'Would you kindly oblige us, Is that the right time?'
As I galloped, you galloped, we galloped, ye galloped they too have galloped; let us trot.

I unsaddled the saddled, unbuckled the bit,
Unshackled the bridle (the thing didn't fit)
And ungalloped, ungalloped, ungalloped,ungalloped a bit.
Then I cast off my bluff-coat, let my bowler hat fall,
Took off both my boots and my trousers and all -
Drank off my stirrup-cup, felt a bit tight,
And unbridled the saddle, it still wasn't right.

Then all I remember is, things reeling round
As I sat with my head 'twixt my knees on the ground -
For imagine my shame when asked what I meant
And I had to confess that I'd been, gone and went
And forgotten the news I was bringing to Ghent,
Though I'd galloped and galloped and galloped and galloped and galloped
And galloped and galloped and galloped. (Had I not would I have been galloped?)

ENVOI
So, I sprang to a taxi and shouted 'To Aix!'
And he blew on his horn and he threw off his brakes,
And all the way back till my money was spent
We rattled and rattled and rattled and rattled and rattled
And rattled and rattled -
And eventually sent a telegram.

To begin...

Well, here goes...
Wonder how many times I'll actually get here...?