As you may know, the local administrator at each institution subscribing to QuestionPoint’s cooperative chat service are encouraged to review closely all chat transcripts in which their patrons were helped by librarians at other institutions. If the admin sees something notable (good or bad), the admin can describe in an email to the QuestionPoint quality control team what went well or went wrong in the chat session. That QuestionPoint team then reviews the comments from the admin, considers the relevant policies and procedures, and then composes a message that is sent to the admin at the other institution.
Each year, the quality control team at QuestionPoint compiles a list of the things that are most often at the heart of quality control complaints. Here is this year’s list that was published today on the QuestionPoint: 24/7 Reference Services blog:
Policy Page: Librarian did not use policy page to answer the question or use local library’s resources; information was on the policy page which would have answered the patron’s question
Resolution Codes: Librarian did not use a resolution code or did not use the correct resolution code.
Reference Conversation: Librarian did not conduct an adequate reference interview.
********* Compliments!! *********
Incorrect Information: Librarian sent the patron incorrect information
Tone/Phrasing: The chatting tone of the librarian affected the quality of the session, or, the librarian used negative phrasing.
Ended Abruptly: Librarian ended session abruptly without a natural closure to the conversation or when the patron still seemed to need help.
Sources: The librarian could have sent the patron better sources. For example, perhaps the librarian only sent Wikipedia and then ended the call.
No Searching: Librarian did no searching.
Search Strategies: Librarian could have used different search strategies that would have made the session more effective, or could have suggested search strategies to the patron when recommending that the patron search a database.
Contact Library/Followup Option: Librarian told the patron to contact his library (by phone or visit), without offering the option for email followup.
Here is what I posted to the Question Point blog in response:
While it may be helpful to discuss quality issues most frequently reported, it must be noted that these do not necessarily reflect overall quality. Participating institutions do not have standardized review and reporting processes. It would be much more informative and significant if the Quality Group routinely took a stratified random sample of sessions and reviewed and reported on this. Such an unbiased review would also provide valuable tracking statistics.
JY