Are They Willing to Wait and What If They Do? An Analysis of Virtual Reference Service

1. Are They Willing to Wait and What If They Do?An Analysis of Virtual Reference Service Dr. John V. Richardson Jr. UCLA Professor of Information Studies LSSI Presidential Scholar VRD Chicago, 12 November 2002

2. Presentation Outline • LSSI’s Virtual Reference Toolkit • Wait Queues and Standards • Service Duration and Standards • Subsequent User Satisfaction • Further Readings

3. LSSI’s Virtual Reference Toolkit • LSSI’s software version 2.5 captures time in queue, service duration, the entire virtual reference transaction (which can be email to the user at the end), and presents a user satisfaction survey at the end of every query. • SOURCE: login at http://virtualreference.net or try the live demonstration while you are here at VRD and at http://www.vrtoolkit.net/Virtual_prod_serv.htmand

4. Wait Queues • Waiting time or time in queue can be measured as the number of seconds the user waits before the reference librarian joins the chat. • Average values can be determined for all users, by types of library, or for a specific library • Outliers equal more than 900 seconds (ie, 15 minutes) • Negative values and missing values dropped from calculations

5. Service Standard for Queues • Call centers, including bank and telephone companies, have adopted varying service standards • Ranging from thirty (N=30) seconds to as little as ten (N=10) seconds; the first standard requires less staff, the other more…

6. More on Queuing Standards • Most common standard is eighty (N=80) percent answered within twenty (N=20) seconds; stated as 80/20 or even easier standard of 80/30 seconds • WHY? Because it is thought that decreasing wait times result in higher user satisfaction • Standard deviation (SD) is a measure of how closely the data clusters around the mean…think of it as centrality or dispersion

7. All Types Lib 41.8 seconds Academic Lib A 41.5 seconds Consortia C 53.7 seconds The goal is 30 seconds or even the more demanding 20 seconds! SD 88.9 80/30: 76%; 80/20: 63% SD 81.1 80/30: 72%; 80/20: 57% SD 101 80/30:65%; 80/20: 52% What if the goal were 100% of all questions? Time in Queue by Library

8. Staffing Considerations • Once one knows the queuing time, one can allocation staffing to the virtual reference center • Using Erlang C or Pollaczek-Khintchine formulas • Thereby helping to set user expectations because otherwise a certain percentage of users will not be satisfied…

9. Dr. Jon Anton at Purdue University • “Our entire database across all industries indicated that US call centers answer 80% of all calls in an average of 42 seconds.” • SOURCE: http://www.benchmarkportal.com

10. So, What?… • It appears, based on nearly 20,000 real transactions that libraries, of any type, are not staffing virtual reference service adequately, even if one wishes to adopt a relative easier standard, e.g., the 80/30 rule… • On the other hand, libraries are doing slightly better than the average of all industries, according to Purdue University’s database

11. Service Duration • Service duration can be defined as the amount of time, in seconds, spent in a chat with a user’s query. • Average values can be determined for all users, by types of library, or for a specific library • Outliers equal more than 3600 seconds (i.e., 1 hour) • Negative values and missing values dropped from calculations

12. Service Duration Standards • Willingness to answer the query… • Librarian satisfaction, not significant • Client satisfaction, not significant • Answering success, weak association • SOURCE: Whitlatch (1990); only one study, though…

13. More Duration Standards • The research literature suggests average time spent on live, face-to-face reference transactions in public libraries ranges from twenty (N=20) to forty (N=40) minutes • Academic library users may spend ten (N=10) to twenty (N=20) minutes with reference librarians • SOURCE: Mary De Jong (1926); Herbert Goldhor (1967); Charles Bunge (1969; 1990); Whitlatch (1990); John Stalker (1996)

14. All libraries 11.2 minutes Acad Lib A 8.9 minutes Acad Lib B 14.1 minutes Cons. C 12.3 minutes SD 10.8 minutes SD 9.1 minutes SD 14.2 minutes SD 11.1 minutes Service Duration by Library

15. User Satisfaction • Based on a thorough review of more than 1,000 citations (http://purl.org/net/reference), Matthew Schall (Vice President, Unifocus) and John Richardson have developed: • PaSS ™, Patron Satisfaction Survey • SOURCE: http://www.vrtoolkit.net/PaSS.html

16. PaSS ™, Patron Satisfaction Survey • 7-point Likert scale ranging from very … to average to very …: • Comprehension of the question • Friendliness (i.e., very friendly, average, very unfriendly) • Helpfulness • Promptness • Self-reported satisfaction with the process • SOURCE: http://www.vrtoolkit.net/PaSS.html

17. Further Readings • Matthew Saxton and John Richardson, UnderstandingReferenceTransactions: TransforminganArtintoAScience (New York: Academic Press, 2002) • 1,000 citations at http://purl.org/net/reference • Matthew Schall and John Richardson, "What LSSI has Done to Measure Satisfaction with the Virtual Reference Tool Kit," by Dr. Matthew Schall, Unifocus and John V. Richardson Jr., Presidential Scholar, LSSI; Germantown, MD: Library Systems and Services LLC, 17 April 2002.