By Penny Bailey (Bailey Solutions) from MMIT 2015

1. How to measure the impact of your enquiry
service: tips and techniques
By Penny Bailey BA, Dip Lib, MCLIP, MIoD, FRSA
Managing Director of Bailey Solutions Ltd

2. Content
• Why measure the impact of your enquiry service?
• Part 1:the problems
• Part 2: tips and techniques
• Part 3: the results

3. The background
• What do you do all day?
• Staffing levels are under scrutiny
• Management are talking about outsourcing / using
volunteers
• How do you prove you need your team members?
• Who uses your services?
• Would it matter if library users went elsewhere?

4. Resources budget cut
• How much are they used?
• Who uses them?
• How do you know which resources to cancel and
which to keep?
• What types of enquiries are you doing and what
resources do you need?

5. Part 1: the problems

6. Gate tallies are not qualitative

7. Problems collecting statistics
Hodgepodge management of enquiry service as
enquiries come in via:
•Emails
•Web forms
•Chat services
•Phone calls
•Walk-ups

8. Using your inbox to manage enquiries
• Enquiries go direct to staff
• Enquiries and responses in email inboxes
• What happens when staff go off sick?
• Shared inbox – who’s doing which one?
• How do you prioritise?

9. Problems with the inbox cont.
• Keeping email threads together
• Making sure question is completed on time
• Response is highly individualistic
• Emails are not data

10. Has anyone done this before?
• Sure I did something similar to this 6 months ago, but
can’t find it now!
• Maybe my colleagues have done something similar?
• We’ve been asked this same question 20 times this
week already!

11. Recording enquiries is tedious
• I use email to process the enquiry – why do I have to
re-key the enquiry into a database?
• How do I know how much time I spent?
• I also have to fill in this spreadsheet with costs for our
accounts department

12. Team leaders: how do I manage the team?
• How can I monitor the team to improve service levels?
• How do I measure individual or team performance?
• How do I get staff to improve their productivity?

13. Problems getting statistics
• Tracking enquiries involves keying in data from
different sources
• Spreadsheet is vulnerable to staff error
• Time consuming
• Can only track users for consultations and don’t
have info for 17,000 walk-ups

14. Problems measuring the service
• Can’t rate the customer experience
• Can’t measure impact on student success
• No explicit performance targets
• Would like to make improvements to service levels
but not sure where time is wasted

15. Part 2: Tips and techniques
“You can’t manage what
you don’t measure”

16. Make it easy to ask
Keep all lines of communication
open
• Web forms
• Email
• Chat
• Phone
• Face to face
• Social media

17. Central store of updated user data
One unique identifier =
name, email, mobile phone number,
gender, age, ethnicity, department,
location, courses, address, year,
leaving date and photo

18. User data is already collected before enquiry
processing
Only one unique piece of information required
Walk- ups Email or student ID
Phone calls Email or student ID
Web forms Email or student ID
SMS Mobile phone number
Chat Email or student ID
Email Email

19. Integration is key
A centralised enquiry tracking
system integrated with
communication tools and the
central user registry is essential!

20. Record every enquiry at the point of
processing
• Every enquiry no matter how short
• Not afterwards
• Everything
• Automate as much as possible

21. Make it easy to process & record enquiries
• Automate
• Use defaults

22. Record time spent
Timer that can be
• started
• paused
• restarted
• stopped
• assigned

23. Save enquiry handler’s time by
recording costs
• Aggregated data transfer to finance department
is accurate and time saving

24. Publish FAQs
•Users can help themselves
and staff can concentrate on
in-depth, difficult or one-off
questions

25. Searchable knowledge base

26. Part 3: The results

27. Who’s using your service?
Who’s not?
Informs your marketing strategy

28. When do they use the service?
Informs opening hours and staff availability

29. How do they use the service?
• Email
• Phone
• SMS
• In person
• Chat
• Web forms
Informs how the service should be offered

30. Customer satisfaction reports
• Statistics on the number of enquiries completed by
the deadline
• How do they rate your service?
• How do they perceive your response times?
• How do they rate resources?

31. Evidence to improve team performance
• Time spent by each member of staff
• Average time taken to answer
Review customer
satisfaction record of
each staff member

32. Aggregated costs
• Aggregated data transfer to finance department
is accurate and time saving

33. Evidence based management of resources
• Reports on ratings of resources

34. Evidence based management of resources
• Reports on resource usage used to justify continued
subscription or cancellation

35. Justify service levels
• That whilst the number of enquiries has gone down,
self service using knowledge base has increased
• The amount of time spent on enquiries to justify a
need to increase / retain staff

36. Prove value of staff
• The average time spent on enquiries has decreased
– staff are working more efficiently
• Customer satisfaction records have improved or
remained at high levels

37. Types of enquiries
Reports on the types of enquiries the service handles to
inform
• Training gaps
• Need for subject specialists
• Resources requirements

38. Prove value of service to users
• Impact analysis by correlating use of the library and
library services with achievements

39. Find out more about KnowAll Enquire: enquiry
tracking software from Bailey Solutions
penny@baileysolutions.co.uk
Tel: 01273 773788
www.knowallenquire.com