Comments on: Being Transparent Isn’t Enough

By: Web Design Minneapolis

Web Design Minneapolis — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 03:35:28 +0000

Thanks for sharing, I have to say that you have a great blog! That’s really a shame about Car & Driver. I am only 23 and I definitely love the Internet and all, but I also equally love magazines! It’s too bad that people would just completely change their magazine to accomodate their website. I actually used to work at a library myself not too long ago. It was my first job (I was 16 and was a shelver) and I have the utmost respect for anyone who works at a library. Thanks for letting all of us get to know you through the blog!

By: Polly Farrington

Polly Farrington — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 06:27:24 +0000

Great post – great examples of the yin and yang of customer service. Made for a timely discussion topic in a class today. Thanks for the thoughtful blog posting.

By: Jen Rutner

Jen Rutner — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 15:32:41 +0000

I think that often libraries (librarians) are not comfortable explaining why a change can’t happen, and that impedes our moving towards transparency. If we don’t have the money, why can’t we say that we don’t have the money? Doesn’t this strengthen our arguments for increased funding in the future? I for one would love to be able to go to a Director/Dean/Provost with documentation from interactions with patrons supporting my needs to increase funding to pay for new, needed, services. Isn’t this part of the new assessment movement as well – collecting qualitative data to support data driven decision making? Transparency can also provide many opportunities for patrons to learn to better advocate for their needs, and assist us in pursuing our goal of supporting their teaching and learning.

And, thank you thank you thank you for bringing up the “patrons only write in when they’re mad about something so we don’t have to take them seriously, and this is clearly a scewed sample” issue. It’s nice to have concrete examples of why that’s not the best way to approach user feedback.

Keep ‘em coming!

By: Steve Campion

Steve Campion — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 01:45:15 +0000

Very good discussion, Meredith, and points to consider. In my system, the great reluctance to respond to suggestions is sometimes used as an argument against being transparent. So, in a bizarre way, I’d rather be ineffectively transparent than not transparent at all.

That said, I’m certainly not advocating ineffective transparency! What I think works well is gradual change. I’m always confounded that any organization declares on such and such a date they’ll be big changes and then confuse the heck out of (or anger) everyone. I like phasing things in little by little, seeing how things go, getting the feedback, tweaking things, and then phasing in whatever’s next. There’s less disruption and you can adjust things on the fly as you see what works and what doesn’t, what people like and what people don’t.

You can’t do this with everything, of course, but it’s amazing how much you CAN do this way. I’m involved in a big intranet changeover this summer, for instance. We worked out the plans months ago and now it’s being built. But between design and rollout, we’ve slowly been morphing our existing site to look like and kind of act like our future one. Links have been slowly renamed and moved around the screen. We’ve been getting comments and adjusting our final product behind the scenes. We hope when the day comes to flip the switch, everyone will be so used to the basics that they’ll shrug and go back to working with it.

In a way it’s so transparent, people barely see it happening!

By: docwolf

docwolf — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 19:58:10 +0000

I’m the aforementioned husband and ex-subscriber from the post. The thing that is a touch infuriating about the whole episode was the lack of transparency not afterwards, but before the redesign took place. As far as I can tell, they never once queried us, their existing subscriber base, or even held an informal focus group online to ask us about changes that we might like to see.

Ironically, the redesign hasn’t even endeared them to the new demographic that they were attempting to reach. Car and Driver has become the “Poochie” of auto mags — the harder it tries to look “cool”, the lamer it becomes.

By: Diane R. Chen

Diane R. Chen — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 19:03:45 +0000

Excellent post and comments. I need to think much more about transparency and school libraries. You have much hidden in this little blog post. THank you.

By: Walt Crawford

Walt Crawford — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 18:21:19 +0000

Excellent post, one that I’ll save for further analysis. I particularly appreciated your aside, one that doesn’t seem to come up much: Is it reasonable to toss aside or alienate a loyal existing audience in attempts to gain a new audience? I was just about to write a post raising that question based on an entirely different personal incident; maybe I will tomorrow. Obviously the answer is neither “We can’t change because we might alienate somebody” or “We must attract X, so too bad for Y.” The answer, if there is one, is more difficult and more local…and indeed involves both transparency and paying attention, not only to what people say but to what they do. Anyway, great stuff.

By: Meredith Farkas

Meredith Farkas — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 18:18:14 +0000

I think as long as you are showing the user that you take their suggestions seriously and either show that you’re doing something about it or give them a good reason why you can’t change it (like it would be bad for other patrons, don’t have funding yet, etc.) you’re in good shape. We can’t always do what our patrons want, but you can still make them feel like we take their concerns seriously.

I think your answer was fine for that situation, but I think it would also be good to follow up at some time with that patron and let them know what the status is. To just say you’re reviewing it and never follow-up is bad form. If you’re not really reviewing it, then it probably wasn’t a good answer. As long as we’re honest and show that we’re taking their comment seriously, I think we’re doing good.

We’ll never make everyone happy, but you shouldn’t just blow off people’s concerns or make them feel like you don’t care about their concerns. You can let someone know why having magazines for check-out isn’t currently economically feasible while still making them feel like you care about their needs.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 16:57:27 +0000

Great points and thank you for bringing attention to a great idea. Libraries need to be more transparent in this way since it shows they are aware of the problem and are doing something about it.

However, there is the problem of the in-between extremes. Yes, if you get flamed like that, you should be doing an about-face, but what about a smaller suggestion. If it’s something the library cannot accomplish, are they bad? I know I received suggestions about making our magazines available for check-out. I would like to, but currently the resources aren’t there, and I explained that we are reviewing it. Is that not transparent enough?