Here are some suggestions for communicating effectively in a chat interaction. They can be boiled down to: Be a little informal, be pithy and be responsive.
1. Chat is an informal communication medium. Try to sound as friendly and approachable as you appear at the Ask Us Desk.
Examples:
Too formal. Hello, I am the reference librarian on duty this morning. How may I assist you?
Too informal: LOL 'sup?
Better: Hi, give me a moment to read your question and I'll be right with you!
After you've had a few interchanges with the patron, you may choose to mirror their level of formality, more or less formal according to the way they present themselves.
Things that help with friendliness and approachability are:
- using their name in your initial reply
- using phrases that give some affective feedback, like "Great question!" or "That's an interesting issue!"
- winding up with an invitation to chat again if they need more help.
2. Respond as quickly as possible when picking up the chat. In the above example, I picked up before I had even read the question.This is so I can let the patron know I am ready to assist. I can then go back and read the question but my patron knows that I'm there and working with them.
3. Respond to the patron while you are working on the question. It may take me 5 minutes to find an answer, but I don't want to leave them hanging. Every now and then, I'll pop back into the chat to let them know I'm still on the line and still looking.
4. Try to keep your responses as brief as possible. Wordy and chat don't go well together. If you have a lengthy response, it's probably best to break it up into chunks rather than spend time crafting a paragraph and then sending it all at once.
5. Feel free to use your judgment and transition a chat to a more appropriate mode of communication when necessary. Chats are not intended to be 20 minutes of solid typing. If you can tell up front that a question is too complex or if a patron peppers you with questions, suggest they call or offer to reply to them via email.
6. Also feel free to refer a question to a liaison librarian if it's outside your area of expertise!
7. Don't worry if you aren't hearing back from a patron. Sometimes they will wander off, or their phone will ring, or someone wants them to take out the trash. Give them some time to come back; you can work on something else in the meantime. If it's been 10 minutes since their last comment, feel free to invite them to chat again if they need more help and close the chat (the length of time is completely up to you.)
There is actually quite a bit of interest in how to do chat well, not just in the library world but in the customer service world in general. Here are some fun articles to read if you want to learn a little more about how to chat effectively.