Our fantastic speakers: Louise, Lee, Helen, Sally & Mari Ann

The CLIC Virtual Support event took place on Thursday 22nd January 2015 in the Bute Building of Cardiff University.  We had a really informative morning hearing all about the virtual chat services of five different institutions, which although similar did experience differences in the way they were set up and the way they were used.

The first speaker of the morning was Lee Campbell from Cardiff and Vale College his talk Ask Alan: CAVC Learning and Skills Centre’s Live Chat Service demonstrated that even the best laid plans don’t always lead to fruition, as despite all their hard work ‘ALAN’ has not really been used. The purpose of ALAN (or Ask a Learning Advisor Now) has been to provide an extension of learning skills support at the FE institution, rather than to answer library enquiries.  Based in Moodle, various improvements have been made to the services since it started; and a “Name that Alan” competition was used as a promotion.  It is possible that the FE users it is aimed at don’t need the service as all their queries are answered elsewhere, or that this particular demographic are wary or nervous of using such a service.  CAVC will continue to look at ways of improving and promoting it.  (One thing I quite liked was their use of different Alans – an Alan of the month/year – as a quirky way of promotion).

The second speaker was Louise Wallace from University of South Wales with her Virtual Chat Services at The University of South Wales. When their service was first launched they were the University of Glamorgan, they didn’t promote the service initially as it was a new service for staff and they wanted them to get used to using it without being overwhelmed.  It was found to be challenging and scary for some staff, not being sure of what they would be asked, but as they got used to it they enjoy helping the students.  Since merging with University of Newport and become the University of South Wales, they have found that they have fewer staff and more sites.  A decision was made to get rid of enquiry desks and use the virtual chat service as the main point of information.  This was a positive validation of the service but came with more challenges, as a result they activated more queue settings and also used a non-live chat service setting in addition.  Staff have learned to delegate queries if they are too busy, or if the query is not their speciality.  With two library catalogues at the moment (due to the merger) they are only able to have the widget on one of them, this obviously reduces traffic, but it is hoped that when the new LMS is implemented that this will be resolved. Having gained feedback and ideas after giving presentations about the service at Gregynog and elsewhere, the service is promoted in many places from the University app to plasma screens and multi-function machines.  Louise also compiled a guide of FAQs and stock answers to help staff who are manning the service.

The third speaker was Mari Ann Hillier from Cardiff University with VL @ Cardiff: Stepping on from WebH3lp to Bomgar. Cardiff University have had a virtual chat service longer than the other institutions, it was initially run as a trial, and was partly envisioned as a help for distance learning students.  After a successful pilot it continued and has had a high take up from users; in 2014 they had 9150 chats! Last year they transferred to Bomgar as they found they had extending requirements.  They wanted a screen-share facility, for it to work on mobile devices and to keep an audit of remote sessions.  Moving to Bomgar has provided a greater capacity for interaction with students, but there has been a loss of smiley faces!  While this may sound trivial, they have found that there has been a lessening in the flourish of thanks they receive from users.  Although a successful service there has been pressure on staff, who are expected to answer live chat queries alongside enquiry desk work and email queries, there are no extra staff or extra money to deliver the service.  Next steps include a sharing of best practice, staff development, training, and a potential responsive rota or centralised service.

After the break we returned to the session with Helen Blockwell from Cardiff Metropolitan University with “Is there anybody there?” Implementing a Library Webchat Service at Cardiff Met.  Cardiff Met already had an IT webchat service based at their helpdesk, and it seemed appropriate for the library to follow this example.  They have users situated off campus and even abroad who benefit from the service (and even some sat in the library who use it!).  They realised that they had been providing a 24 hour access service for a while, so it seemed logical to embrace webchat.  Last summer Helen talked to the IT team about their service, then set about creating a library one, with initial internal practice sessions.  She put together a guide for staff to use with a troubleshooting page.  They only had a soft launch in the summer; a few members of staff were trained and their enthusiasm has encouraged others to take part.  At the moment it has not been fully promoted but once it has been rolled out on both campuses they will do this.  Their webchat has two queues, one for IT and one for library, and it is possible to transfer a call across if it isn’t in the appropriate queue.  At the moment they don’t have a rota system, so staff have to remember to make themselves ‘unavailable’ when they are away from their desks.  So far users have been very happy with the service.

The final speaker of the day was Sally Brockway from the Royal College of Nursing library with Chasing the Sun: Virtual Enquiry at the RCN  After giving us some contextual information about the RCN libraries (the Welsh one has just two members of staff) Sally explained that the virtual enquiry service came about because most members of the RCN are generally not near or able to use the physical libraries; and while there has been increasing online and mobile access to the libraries the virtual enquiry service seemed like the next logical step.

They have also joined the consortium “Chasing the Sun” which brings together UK and Australian health care libraries with a live chat service (although they believe that RCN is currently the only UK library service now). This consortium takes advantage of the time differences between countries, thus UK libraries can cover when Australia is asleep and vice versa.  The service originated at the time of the Bali bombings when healthworkers needed key medical information at night.  Thus it started as a kind of emergency service.  Obviously they can’t help with specific IT queries but both sides can answer generic health information queries.  It is hoped that in the future they can get the US involved to help improve the time coverage.

Once all the speakers had given their presentations there was a panel discussion Q&A session, this brought the audience into the discussion with a variety of questions and comments, and seemed a very popular part of the event.

Overall it was an interesting morning hearing about chat services that are at different points on their journeys.  A couple of speakers noted that when they have talked about the service at a conference, or just in conversation with someone from another institution, they have come away with useful feedback and ideas, so I hope that all attending and speaking at this event gained something to take away with them (in addition to a CLIC badge and fridge magnet!)

Karen F. Pierce (Cardiff University)