Present: Peter Cohn, Remlee Green (Chair), Bill Helman, Lisa Horowitz, Angie Locknar, Heather McCann, Georgiana McReynolds, Mark Szarko (Minutes), Barbara Williams
Guests: Cassandra Fox, Nicole Hennig, Nora Murphy, Christine Quirion, Howard Silver
Transaction management: Responding and referring user questions and issues
Guests: Cassandra Fox, Nicole Hennig, Nora Murphy, Christine Quirion, Howard Silver
A pervasive theme that has emerged in re-organization planning and discussions is how we handle questions and issues that users bring to us. During the meeting, we focused on process and practices for transactions that are not best resolved at the point of inquiry. Questions that were part of the discussion included:
- What circumstances should trigger a referral?
- Do we have a shared understanding about who should receive the referral?
- What are our handoff practices?
- What are the expectations for the handoff recipient?
- Do we follow-up with the originator of the referral?
- Do we follow-up with the user?
The goals of the discussion were as follows:
- Describe current practices and identify some best practices for transaction management.
- Suggest organization structure and management to support and implement those practices.
- Specific ideas related to improving referral mechanisms between in-person and virtual service queues.
For this discussion, it was agreed that the following was out of scope: improving our ability as an organization to handle more queries at the point of inquiry. This is an important issue, but one best left to a different discussion.
Each RISG member was asked to prepare the following before the meeting:
- Think about specific examples of successful transactions that involved a referral process.
- Can include your experience as a initiator or recipient of a referral.
- Could include an experience for you as a client in a non-library transaction.
Each person discussed their answers to these questions with a partner before sharing them with the group as a whole.
Discussion
Each pair shared stories about successful referrals. Among the questions or general points that came up:
There needs to be a move toward creating lists around certain topics rather than relying on one individual to answer questions. If there’s only one person who can answer the question and that person is on vacation, the user could be left without an answer for a while. Such a system would also eliminate the confusion about which individual is the appropriate expert for a particular question.
Several people expressed a desire to keep the referral process hidden from the user (i.e., the staff member contacts appropriate people and gets the answer back to the user). Sometimes it is a challenge to know when to hand a question off to someone else, and when to get the answer and get back to the user.
Interdisciplinary questions can be very challenging, since multiple people need to be brought into the mix.
Many agreed that being cc-ed on a response is good, since it lets the original staff person know that the question was answered. This is also true in situations where a manager must be brought in to handle or refer the question. Transparency is key so the initiator sees that process is closed---you want to make sure that the person is helped.
Evenings pose special challenges, since subject experts are not available. Providing the name of the appropriate expert is good, but so is getting the user started (perhaps showing them the appropriate subject guide).
In units where individuals are physically closer together, it is often easier to handle referrals and make sure questions get answered.
Referrals are also easier when everyone knows the rules (as opposed to referring it to a unit where the initiator isn’t sure of what the procedure is).
There are different ways of tracking questions throughout the system (paper forms, RT, mixture of both). Referrals that begin with an in-person question are more difficult to track. Some in-person questions (such as fine disputes) get inputted into RT so that they can be tracked.
ILB questions are harder to refer because of Touchstone.
Several people mentioned that they are sometimes informed by another staff member that a patron was just referred to them, but then they never hear from the patron, which is very awkward. Should we be more involved in the referral process rather than just handing the user a business card? Other possible solutions to this question might be a “handshake” in phone referrals (talking to the specialist first before transferring the call) or taking down the user’s name and e-mail address and have the specialist contact them. Staff can also just swipe the user’s ID in Aleph and get their contact information that way. If the desk is busy, some of these solutions become more difficult, however.
Has there been any assessment of how referrals work from the user’s perspective, either in the library or other (business?) literature?
Time on the user’s end is an issue. When they come in to ask a question, they’ve clearly carved out time from their schedule to do so. Being referred to someone else may not always be optimal, because the time may not be convenient for the user at that point.
Perhaps we can raise the level of training for staff, but also manage user expectations.
Some people shared experiences of getting a referral that they felt several other people could also have easily answered.
The Apple Store experience might offer some ideas. For example, it’s clear when the user walks in that the floor staff performs different functions than those at the Genius Bar.
Subject guides are often used by librarians to refer questions.
Is there a list of where to refer users?
What are some ways of gathering feedback from users (computer surveys, etc)? These surveys are best when they’re super short.
Possible Best Practices:
- More cross-training among staff.
- List of e-mail lists, all in one place. And more people on each list so we don’t rely on one person (who may be out).
- Brown bags by subject experts on the tools of their area, with examples of common questions (so staff is more able to handle basic questions in more areas).
- Involved support staff. One element of a successful referral is that the person who referred question learns something, too.
Wrap-Up
In person and telephone---we don’t have as well established a practice for these kinds of questions as we do for electronic. There’s more we can do to change that.
Feedback, or “completing the circle” is key so that each referral is also a learning experience.
Potential roles of LibAnswers & knowledge base tools (Lisa Horowitz)
The subgroup reported on a software package, LibAnswers, that could be a potential knowledge base for reference questions. There are still some issues that the developers are working to fix. The software is inexpensive. It would not replace RT, but would be a place for users to search for answers before using Ask Us!
We discussed different ways of moving forward, and agreed on the following next steps:
- The subgroup will bring it to UIG next.
- Lisa will contact IS&T to find out what kind of use their knowledge base, Hermes, gets.
- If we decide to move forward, perhaps we could start with questions already in our public FAQs.
Announcements & updates
Questions about Greenwire should be sent to Heather McCann.
The Wordpress registration site for events and classes is going to be piloted during IAPril.
The Undergraduate Assessment Group announced that the same question that went into the alumni survey will go into the upcoming Senior and Pre-freshmen surveys. This information should start to give us some data on student perceptions about their information-seeking skills.
Everyone was encourage to participate in the undergraduate assessment pilot this semester.
Everyone was encouraged to record their IAPril sessions using the video capture in the DIRC.
Remlee is doing LibEx/Zotero presentation in a few weeks on March 25, 2010, from 10-11 in the DIRC.