eCRM through your website

This article is from the April 2002 Issue of Update.

As increasing numbers of users access electronic resources through the library website, the opportunities for in-house publicity, instruction guides and relationship building through person-to-person contact at the reference or issue desk are declining. The digital or hybrid library needs a philosophy that involves the proactive management of relationships with users through the library website. This article reviews some of the issues associated with e-customer relationship management (eCRM).

Attract and retain

A website is a small window through which messages can be communicated to an audience. From a marketing communications perspective, the challenge is to attract users to the website, and then to retain them. In order to achieve this, both access routes to the website, and its structure and content, need attention:

• promotion of the website URL needs to occur through as many channels as possible. In academic libraries, this involves consideration of links between institutional, departmental and individual academic's web pages;

• home page design needs to be looked at, so that once users have arrived at the home page, they are captivated to explore further;

• navigation devices that support exploration of the website have to be considered, so that users can move comfortably around a complex assortment of resources.

Libraries have focused on website design and navigation, but have they thought about the website from the perspective of service delivery, whether the service experience delivered through the website fulfils users' expectations? Do they consider how users evaluate the service?

Communication

Communication and interaction are generally an important component of the process of relationship building. The following are available to support communication: email, newsgroups, chat rooms, expert forums, message board, FAQs and other user information, and feedback forms.

These support all of library-to-user, user-to-library and user-to-user interaction. Such interactions need to be managed. One important arena for electronic communication on a one-to-one or one-to-many basis is email. The panel opposite summarises some important guidelines regarding effective email communication. Libraries need to develop policy and practice (including e-helpdesk operations) and to develop staff accordingly. Other tools, such as message boards and bulletin boards, support the development of online communication. Online communities are discussed further below.

Knowing about users

Communication is one source of insight into users' interests and concerns. Another rich channel for profiling users' activities is data that can be collected about users and traffic. This includes:

• server log data, such as the number of visits to a website, the duration of those visits, and the parts of the website visited by the user;

• data that users submit during a registration process, or any other process during which they are asked to complete feedback forms, or profile data about themselves;

• data from transactions, such as self-issue, or ordering of electronic full text of documents;

• data that can be collected via cookies. Once a user has registered with a host, cookies can be used to track their web activity.

The challenge is to use this data to create knowledge of users, to support customisation and profiling of user groups, and to inform strategy.

Relationships

In recent years marketers have progressed from a focus on sales transactions, to one that emphasises the continuing relationship between the business and its customers. In the sense that libraries have always sought to serve a community — and the traditional borrowing and return of books is a wonderfully inventive model that encourages continuing transactions — library managers have always owned a relationship philosophy. The challenge is to replicate the opportunities for relationship building in the virtual world.

The first step in building effective relationships is to try to see the users' point of view. Do users want a relationship with the library? Relationships are two-way. Lifting the interaction between the library and the user from a transaction basis to a relationship basis requires mutual perspectives on, and development of, perceptions of value, trust and commitment. Marketers refer to the concept of loyalty when seeking to encapsulate customers' attitudes and behaviour towards organisations. Do users act in a loyal way (i.e. make repeat visits, extend their engagement with the service)? Do users recommend services to others (perhaps through student-to-student communication) and thereby reflect a positive attitude to the service?

Relationships also have differing lifetimes. Typically, the undergraduate student relationship lasts a maximum of three years, with possibly a very slow 'introduction' and 'getting acquainted' phase running through the first year. Sometime during their first or second year they may move on to the second phase, 'experimentation', during which they make contact with the services and start to understand how to make effective use of them.

During the 'identification' phase, the onus is on the service provider to encourage the user to develop the relationship further, through initiating dialogue about service quality and satisfaction. If this phase is successfully negotiated the relationship may move into the 'continuous renewal' phase, during which the users and the service providers know what to expect of each other. For the relationship to continue successfully it needs to evolve as the parties change, but there is an underlying commitment built on past positive experiences that reinforces the likelihood that the relationship will be sustained.

Most relationships eventually reach a point where the two parties are no longer able to satisfy each other, and parting on good terms or 'dissolution' needs to be managed as a basis for continuing positive recommendations to others, or re-establishment of the relationship at a later stage.

Communities

Online communities are important to all organisations in the digital environment as they form an audience, and a customer or user group with whom the organisations can interact. In addition, online communities in organisations can manage and observe user-to-user interactions. Portals, such as Yahoo and Amazon.com, have invested considerable effort into building communities, because this gives them an audience, which means that they can attract and charge advertisers, and e-retailers and service providers.

Libraries need to consider whether they and their users would benefit from seeking to convert a disparate online group of users into a community, where people support each other in learning, and their exploitation of digital information resources. How might such a community interact with other online learning communities, both within the university and beyond? What is the best way of managing the relationship between any online community and parallel real world communities?

The effectiveness of an online community is dependent upon the way in which the community is managed. Community management involves:

• managing content quality. Content may derive from the community organiser or from community members. Some sites also have advertisements and content from other sources. All content must meet quality standards. Often a key role for the community organiser is to ensure the depth and quality of content. Member content will be of variable quality and carry variable levels of authority. Misleading, offensive or contentious member content may need editing;

• managing member engagement. Member behaviour needs to be monitored, to remove disruptive members. Codes of behaviour are necessary;

• respecting member privacy. Both the organisation and all community members need to respect privacy, and to use the information shared with them in a responsible manner.

Online communities have interesting potential, and there is every reason to believe that they are just as important to the public sector as to commercial organisations, in promoting engagement with the organisation and other users.

Conclusion

Early library websites focused on access to information, and the development of the 'product'. While community considerations were generally taken into account in the development of this 'product', little explicit consideration has been given to the way in which libraries can develop and maintain relationships with their users in a digital context. I believe that relationship development involves consideration of communication, profiling, relationships and communities. The challenge facing libraries is to embrace and interpret these concepts in such a way that they are in a position to travel with users through the next generation of innovations.

Professor Jennifer Rowley is Head, School of Management and Social Sciences, Edge Hill College of Higher Education, Ormskirk (Rowleyj@edgehill.ac.uk).