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Global 24/7/365 Chat Cooperative
The Global Chat Cooperative includes hundreds of participating librarians and 20+ Springshare MLS librarians, delivering the highest quality co-op reference coverage for libraries.
Your Virtual Service Desk Is Always Open
Chats Can Start Locally and Fallback to Global
It's All Controlled at the Chat-Widget Level
- Create customizable chat widgets where you decide how a chat cascades from your in-library chat departments to the Cooperative.
- If your local chat department, or local Cooperative is offline - the patron chat will automagically fallback to the next option that's currently online.
- Timed roll-up allows you to customize how long a patron has to wait before it rolls-up to the next available option.
- There's no limit to the number of chat widgets you build and each widget can have different fallback/roll-up functionality.
How Does the LibAnswers Global Cooperative Work?
Available Service Options:
- Customizable Coverage Hours - Not every Library is in need of 24/7 coverage. You choose which days and hours you'd like coverage with flexible pricing.
- Participate in Cooperative or Not - Choose whether you wish to participate in the co-op or just get backup coverage instead.
Available Global Cooperatives:
Academic, Public, & En Español
- Academic Libraries - your patrons will receive 24/7 support from other Academic Libraries around the world.
- Public Libraries - your patrons will 24/7 support from other Public Libraries around the world.
- En Español - Provide and receive 24/7 support en español.
Optionally Create Your Own Local Chat Cooperative
If you work with a group of libraries in your consortia, your state, country, or even across the world - you can form your own local Cooperative.
The benefits of creating your own local Cooperative mean that you get first dibs at answering each other's patron's questions before they roll up to the 24/7 Global Cooperative.
Policy FAQ So Global Librarians Can Best Serve Your Patrons
Sharing Your Library's Info with the Cooperative - Sharing information about your library with fellow librarians around the world is a critical piece of the puzzle. We've created a special type of FAQ Group called the 24/7 Staffing FAQ Group. This way, you'll be able to create FAQs about your hours of operation, links to databases and catalogs, shortcuts to LibGuides, and more.
Additional Cooperative Features That Make Your Life Easier
Springshare has a rigorous Quality Control process to ensure all chats are answered at the highest-quality level.
Review all cooperative-answered chats and provide ratings and feedback to the answering library for in-house improvement.
Cooperative Dashboard to view your activity, Co-Op Admins, member institutions, and other Co-Op librarians.
Tag cooperative-answered chats for Post-Chat Follow-Up to automatically create a follow-up ticket in the home library's system.
Cooperative Reporting and Statistics
View how your patrons chats were answered by the Global Cooperative and vice versa!
Your Patrons' Chat Stats
Statistics on how the Global Cooperative answered your patron's chats.
- Monthly, Daily, Hourly breakdown of chat traffic.
- Types of browsers & operating systems that patrons used when initiating a chat.
- Average wait time, chat duration, and tickets created from chats.
- Patron chat rating of the service they received.
Your Library's Cooperative Contribution
Statistics on how your library's staff contributed to the Global Cooperative.
- Your activity in joined Cooperatives.
- Your library's activity in joined Cooperatives.
- Chat ratings, institution statistics, and top answerers.
- Monthly, daily, and hourly breakdown of your chat Cooperative activity.