LibChat Training Manual

Springshare has a detailed walk through the chat process on their Help & Support page: https://ask.springshare.com/libanswers/faq/1793 Some highlights from that page include:

• How to claim a new chat and preview chats before claiming
• Sending messages
• Switching between active chats
• Ending a chat session

If patrons are getting disconnected from chat, you may want to suggest the Guided/iFrame Chat Mode. 

This very rarely happens, but if you get spam or inappropriate use of chat, you can ban a user's ip address.  

You can also transfer a chat to another staff member or to another chat department. 

When chatting with other staff on the chat dashboard, you should use the internal chat mode rather than sending a chat from the patron widget. Springshare has detailed directions for chatting with different groups internally from the dashboard. You should see a list of operators and departments on the bottom left corner of your screen. Clicking a name will initiate a private chat between you and the other person, while clicking on "All Rutgers University Staff" will initiate a chat with all the people currently logged in to chat. 

When two or three people are scheduled on chat, the default rule is a team approach to alternate taking questions with the other people scheduled. Groups are encouraged to communicate to set strategies that work for them.

For the on call weekend shifts, the primary person will call in the scheduled person on call if they receive four chats in the first 20 minutes of an hour or 4 chats within 10 minutes at any time. The on call person will log on and assess at the 20 minute mark of the next hour and will log off if chats have slowed down. 

LibChat provides an away status that you can set if you're stepping away from the chat for a break. It will not prevent chats from coming in, but it will present the patron with the message: "chat is online but the operator is temporarily away. If you don't want to wait, you can submit your question for email follow-up." and a link to submit questions by email to Ask-A-Librarian.

If there are multiple chat operators, you can also use this status to let others in the chat know that you have stepped away. The circle next to your name in the internal chat will change from green to yellow when you are in away status. 

Banning a user IP is at the librarian's discretion. IP banning may be used in any case of abuse, harassment, or inappropriate behavior. Some circumstances for banning IP addresses may be apparent, but others are more subtle. Here are some clarifying questions that may help determine whether a user should be banned: 

• Are the questions broadly in the scope of academic research at Rutgers? If the question is not in our scope and the patron is behaving inappropriately, banning is the correct course of action. 
• Is this spam or sales? All commercial chats are ok to ban. 
• What is the nature of the inappropriate behavior?
  • Is the patron acting out because they are confused about the function of chat? If so, what can I do to help set appropriate boundaries? 
  • Frequently patrons lash out because they have a problem that we can't solve immediately on chat. All you can offer in this case is empathy and an appropriate referral. It's fine to be firm on this. 

In some cases, banning an IP address is not needed, but you should never feel unsafe or threatened on chat. If this happens, please ban the patron and alert your chat coordinator and the virtual reference librarian.