With Customer Service at the heart of everything we do at Queen’s University Belfast Library Services, it is essential that all of our customers are made to feel welcome and included. A pivotal element of the Customer Service Excellence Standard, through which we have been accredited for four consecutive years, is that we break down our customers into groups, each of which has key characteristics and needs.
This gives us in-depth insights into how we can best develop our services to meet these needs. However, to be truly inclusive we need to identify all groups which are in any way marginalised and try to address their individual needs.
This presentation will consider these traditionally excluded customers and where our service has, in the past, fallen short of making them feel included. It will look at the different ways that we have discovered this inequality and the changes which we have implemented to address this.
There will be an initial reflection on our customers with disabilities, looking beyond physical accessibility into creating a space which welcomes those with mental health and specific learning difficulties. International customers who are battling with cultural differences, often while still grappling with the English language, will also be discussed. The presentation will then go on to consider other marginalised groups of people such as student parents, LGBT customers and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
While it is challenging to create a space which is fully inclusive and meets the individual needs of every customer, it is important that, despite Woody’s derision of Buzz Lightyear’s flying style, we do everything we can to allow our customers to fly in whatever style they want!