A Customer Care Charter: the theory and practice of customer care for law librarians as suppliers of services as well as customers

Extract

How does a supplier of information products, whether in an electronic or hardcopy format, go about keeping a customer happy when that customer happens to be a law librarian? The challenge of providing excellent service is of as much interest to the law librarian as a provider of services as it is to him or her as a consumer of services. For the session entitled “I can't get no satisfaction?” a panel of speakers was created consisting of David Smalley (Commercial Director at Lawtel), Paul Baker (Executive Director, Operations at Butterworths) and Pippa Hall (Customer Services Manager at Sweet & Maxwell). The panel was asked to focus on customer care and how it might be improved. As leading players in the field of customer care within the legal information sector how have they dealt with the issues of billing and customer support and how have they communicated with those customers that have raised problems? Do the speakers see a role for law librarians in the process of product development? How do the speakers see their products developing in the future and how do they expect future developments to be communicated to law librarians in the future?