Customer Advocates: The Library's Secret Weapon

Introduction

Customers are one of the most effective and persuasive contributors of advocacy, or the promotion of an organization, either customer to customer, or customer to decision maker (Walz & Celuch, 2010). If regarded as an asset and nurtured, customer advocacy can become one of the most significant outcomes of strategies to develop a high level of customer engagement. Seeing satisfied users as potential advocates takes the model of word-of-mouth marketing and turns it into a strategic tool for the library to use to position itself as a critical component of the community, one that needs to be supported and nourished. Users are trusted when they speak on behalf of your library because they are seen as having no vested interest in library support. Their jobs are not affected by the level of library funding.

Advocacy occurs in the library and information field in two distinct ways. The first is when the library advocates on behalf of its users, for example in trying to change copyright legislation so that it provides better access for library users (Hobbs, 2016).. The second is when the library advocates on behalf of itself. When we talk about library advocates, we are generally referring to the second type. In particular, library advocacy is primarily focused on securing funding or other support for libraries. For example, advocacy was required to ensure that plans for a new school included adequate space for the library (Henning, 2018), communicating the value of library service to online users (Albert, 2017) and securing government funding for public libraries (Stenstrom & Haycock, 2015). Library advocates, then, are people who speak out on behalf of libraries in order to gain support for them.

Advocacy is not new to librarians. While they have always advocated on behalf of their patrons, and on behalf of the library, they have not always considered others who might partner with them in their efforts. Advocacy includes finding partners who will act for you and with you, in particular to turn passive support into action, whether it is using the library, or making political or administrative decisions in favour of the library. While there are many potential partners, library users are a group that the library may overlook in this role. Sometimes libraries ask their users for support when there is a problem, but this paper recommends that user word of mouth is a strong and underused resource, to be employed constantly.

There is a considerable amount of writing in the professional library literature about advocacy, in particular about how librarians and trustees can learn to advocate on behalf of the library. This includes a number of case studies illustrating successful advocacy campaigns and their outcomes (e.g. Kachel, 2018). What is lacking, however, is a systematic evaluation of a focused effort to use library users as advocates. Similarly, many libraries use social media to promote their activities and programs, but again, these have not described the systematic use of library users in this role (e.g. Harrison, Burress, Velasquez, & Schreiner, 2017).

The Canadian training program for library advocacy, Library Advocacy Now, suggests that there are many groups of people who can be advocates for libraries, including “elected officials, community leaders, students or members of the public” (CAPL, 2011). It does not, however, talk about how to turn members of the public into advocates. This chapter takes the business literature on this subject, and uses it to suggest a way in which this can take place.

What does it take to turn a library user into an advocate? Libraries need to replace the traditional transactional approach with a customer relationship focus. This requires a change in organizational culture. Customers’ needs must drive the service relationship, and interactions must move towards a model of dialogue. Assessment of the library must move away from counting items and transactions, toward assessing satisfaction, loyalty and retention (Roy, 2015). Loyal customers will be more likely to continue to return to the library rather than its competitors for their information needs. Even more importantly, they are more likely to speak out on behalf of the library, both to other potential users, and to people who are making decisions about the future of the library.