Shared Follow-up

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Shared Follow-up is a pool of questions that have been marked "follow-up by patron's library" in chat that any AskUsNow! has access to to answer or forward to a local or subject specialist library. Shared Follow-up is another way that AskUsNow! libraries and librarians help each other out.

Schedule

The following libraries check Shared Follow-up at least once on their day scheduled. Questions in Shared Follow-up should be either answered or referred to the customer's home library or whatever other library or outside organization would best answer the question.

 

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
SLRC SLRC SLRC SLRC SLRC SLRC Frederick Co.
MD State Law MD State Law MD State Law MD State Law MD State Law    
Baltimore Co. Carroll Allegany College Allegany College Harford    
Harford Montgomery College Carroll Carroll      
Prince George's   Montgomery Prince George's      

Who should do follow-up?

Libraries should check the schedule to what see days they are to do follow-up. During a library's day for follow-up, librarians assigned to do follow-up should make sure that questions awaiting follow-up are either answered or routed directly to a library if a specialty is needed.

See Customer Service Excellence in Email Reference for how to do follow-up or email reference.

What do I do if I can't answer a question during a session but feel that a librarian can provide an answer later?

To have a librarian answer the question out of chat, you will want to send the session to "Shared Follow-up." Here are the procedures:

1. Make sure while you are still in chat, that you verify the customers email address. Without a correct email address there is no way for follow-up. Also, check to see if there is a deadline for needing the information; follow-up might not be possible if the customer needs the information immediately.

2. After you have ended the chat, select the "follow-up by patron's library" from the Resolution Code list and click "Add." When the Resolution Code has been added, the space where the menu was will now say "Resolution code set: Follow-up by Patron's library." When you are done you can finish exiting out of the session.

How do I check for and answer questions marked for Shared Follow-up?

Questions that have been marked "follow-up by patron's library" will be found in the "Shared Follow-up" section of your QuestionPoint screen. To see the list follow one of these paths:

My QuestionPoint > Question Lists > Shared Follow-up



OR

My QuestionPoint > Select Service > ASK > Shared Follow-up

 

 

To answer the question, click on the question link. If there is no link, the session is still in progress, and you might not be viewing only the "Shared Follow-up" questions

When you are in the full question view, click "Claim" to claim the question. This puts the question into the My Question List area. Then click "answer." When you are done answering click "Send Answer."

Once your answer has been sent please do not close the question. Questions are only to be closed by those doing quality review (liaisons and the AskUsNow Supervisor).

How do I refer questions to a specific library?

If a question is best suited for a particular library that only that library can answer you need to route the question to that library. If a question is library-specific but simple enough for anyone to answer (policy questions, etc), please do not refer this to another library. If it will only take a moment to answer, please do so yourself.
 
1. Click on the "Refer To" drop down menu when viewing the full question
 
 
2. select "Partner Subscription," and click the arrow to continue. (to refer to the QuestionPoint Quality Control Team, choose "Subject Matter Expert" and then "Quality Control.
 
3. on the next screen, in the "to" drop down menu, select the library you wish to route the question to. Add a note as to why you're routing this question to that library and click "refer"
 
4. You're done! The question will now show up in the chosen library's "new" list.