LibChat Training

Although you may be assigned to multiple chat departments and ticket queues, you may not necessarily want to monitor them by default when each time you sign into LibChat. If you would only like to monitor specific departments and queues by default, look no further than the LibChat Settings in your LibAnswers account.

When a patron submits a chat from a widget connected to a department you're monitoring, you'll receive a notification and see the new chat appear under the Chats tab. To reply to the patron, you must first claim the chat. There are a couple of ways you can do this:

From the Tickets tab, you can view and claim tickets that arrive in the queues you're monitoring. This includes tickets submitted via a question form or email.

If you would like to follow up with the patron after the chat ends, you can create a ticket from the chat.

To prevent patrons from accidentally disconnecting from the chat session when visiting a link or navigating between pages, you can have the patron enter iframe chat mode.

When you request a patron's contact info, you're asking them to provide either their email address or mobile number. This will be stored with the chat transcript and allows you to easily create a ticket for following up with the patron after the chat.

Canned messages are pre-written blurbs that you can add to your replies. These can be great time savers when answering common questions, such as how to renew a book or how late the library is open.

By default, the first and last name from your LibApps user account will display when chatting with patrons. If you would prefer to display an alias instead of your real name, you can set a nickname in your LibAnswers account settings.

While chatting, you can upload and send files to patrons.

A screensharing session can be started once per chat by any staff operator (i.e. a patron cannot start a screensharing session on their own). However, once screensharing has been started and all users have joined the session, any user in the session can share their screen and request/give keyboard & mouse control.

LibChat is great for providing online support to your patrons, allowing you to provide answers. However, with certain types of research or tech support questions, it can be incredibly helpful if both the staff operator and patron user are able to look at the same screen.

If you find yourself answering the same questions over and over, canned messages can help you save time (and keystrokes!). Canned messages are pre-written messages that you can use while chatting. Admins have the ability to create System Canned Messages that can be used by specific departments, or every user in the system. Each individual user also has the ability to create their own personal canned messages that are only accessible to them. These can help staff answer questions quickly and consistently, especially for answers that often includes URLs, phone numbers, or other info that would take time to look up.