This activity was designed and presented to Education Support Staff in schools and was to build on customer skills in dealing with difficult people. The workshop aimed at providing skills for staff to differentiate between different types of customers, service skills identification, human behaviour models, communication power and active listening. It was produced especially for school staff to deal with mostly with parents as the customers. I attended this workshop as a professional development activity organised by the school I work at.

Although this workshop is aimed at Education Support Staff it is transferable to anyone who has a customer facing role. I work in a joint use library which is a collaboration between the secondary school and the local library service and as such I deal mostly with mostly with students, some parents and the local community members as library patrons. This workshop has helped me in my approach to dealing with any of these types of library customers when they have become argumentative, emotional, and angry. Previous to this workshop I found myself becoming heightened in any negative interaction with a customer however now I am using approaches and tactics taught in this workshop and I feel much more confident in dealing with these types of situation and remain and calm.

Using soft skills as a component of emotional intelligence such as self-awareness, self-regulation and empathy, have assisted me in dealing with argumentative students by actively listening to their complaint, empathising with them about how they feel in that moment and acknowledging what they have said to me. After I have done this, I calmy explain my decision about the complaint. If I need to refer it to somebody else to deal with, I will explain that I understand their issue and how they are feeling but it up to this other person to make a decision. I have found by using these responses the students will generally listen to what I am saying and often follow the instructions given. Previously, if I did not let them explain or used a gruff tone, the students would often become more argumentative. It has a made a big impact in how I interact with the students who make poor choices in the library or with a library resource they have borrowed.

I originally thought this session was going to be impractical and uninteresting, so I was very pleased when it was the opposite. The presenter, Cate, was a fantastic facilitator and was engaging and sincere without being condescending or requesting we do role play games, which I do not enjoy in these kinds of activities.  Having a personable facilitator makes a big difference in engagement and what is taken away from the course. We also received a copy of her book ‘The A-Z of service excellence’ which I have read pieces of from time to time remember certain aspects of what was delivered.

The skills taught in this professional development activity can be used in any information professional role in the GLAM sector as customer service and dealing with people is one part of these job descriptions.