Week 2, Experience 3 by Kevin: “Burglars in the library?” (July 5, 2009)
Background
“Tring! Tring!” the shrill sound of the burglar alarm at the Sir Jehangir Ghandy Library’s entrance rang across the library building and the neighboring grounds of XLRI. Not once, but twice in the course of a few minutes, the alarm had been triggered. Who were those good-for-nothing burglars – trying to steal books from our beloved library? Sad to say, I was one of them and Mona Galhotra (Mona Galhotra and Shubham Khurana are my team-mates in the “Product and Brand Management” team) was the other. Except, you know, we weren’t stealing at all … J
Prior Expectations
Our defence ran thus. A couple of days earlier, we had learnt that we needed to go through a few books on our PBM topic “Brand Alliances and Co-branding”. This was for our first submission, the literature review, which was coming up on July 17th. Always trying to be the 1st movers, Shubham, Mona and I had earlier decided to pore through the library to get the best books, before anyone else did. Shubham had gone on a trek to the Dalma Hills on this particular day. Mona and I decided to visit XL’s famed Jehangir Ghandy Library. Both she and I had visited the library a fair number of times before, so we expected an efficient and quick search for books followed by a quick borrowing process for the chosen books. What transpired was quite different!
Actual Experience
We decided on our 7 books (since we had 7 cards between us) and proceeded to the book check-out counter. This was the first time we noticed that there was an electronic device – a sophisticated barcode reading computer – that would process the checking out of the books. We followed the on-screen instructions – which were: first scan each one’s library card barcode followed by the barcodes of each book one by one. We got 2 receipts – one for Mona’s books and the other for mine. We also filled up our names and the borrowing dates on the logs of each individual book manually and handed them over to the librarian. The librarian smiled and told us we could leave. We did leave – or we tried to, at least!. First, Mona tried to go through the detector, resulting in a huge alarm. After that, I did as well, with the same result. The entire library was roused and people looked up. Since we had no bag with us, it was clear we were not burglars. The librarian soon realized that the barcode verification detector at the entrance was malfunctioning and reset it – as well as rescanned the barcodes of the individual books. And finally, we could leave in peace!
SERVICE TRINITY MODEL
| Core Service |
| · Availability of good books when needed · Easy search and quick checkout process |
| Funding Mechanism |
| · Customer pays (through fees, we, the students pay) · Company saves on operations (by having the auto-checkout and verification facility, the company can save on staff over time – but only once the huge fixed cost of equipment is covered through slight increase in fees or elsewhere) |
| Customer Management System |
| · The apologetic attitude of the librarian was crucial. After all, Mona and I had not done anything wrong · Also, he assured us of a flawless checkout the next time, we checked books out |
| Employee Management System |
| · The librarian seemed to be very well-versed in the auto-checkout system – hence we can say, he was effectively instructed · His assistant also seemed calm and did not panic when the system malfunctioned – hence I could make out that both had been trained well |
SERVQUAL ratings
| Dimension | Rating (out of 5) | Remarks |
| Tangibles | 5 | The library was clean, well-organized and silent, as a library should be! |
| Reliability | 1 | The automatic check-out system is not reliable, but should improve over time |
| Responsiveness | 5 | The librarian and his assistant immediately helped us out of our predicament |
| Assurance | 2 | We were assured that next time, the same experience would not repeat. Mona and I hope so … |
| Empathy | 5 | The librarian was empathetic to us once he realized our awkward situation |
N.B.: (1 = very poor, 5 = very good)
Critical Analysis and Suggestions
I have always felt that too much of technology is a bad thing. On leaving the library, Mona and I felt like a teenager - who has used hundreds of anti-hacking passwords on his laptop - only to be locked out, himself! But we put it down to a bad start for the new system. Surely, with time, there would be less ‘burglaries’ J
My only suggestion would be to conduct a system test of the auto-checkout system every few days to prevent an embarrassing time for XLers and even professors who frequent the library! J
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