Adding a Feature: Can a Pop-Up Chat Box Enhance Virtual Reference Services?

Abstract

Online users seek help from virtual reference services via email, phone, texting, and live chat. Technologies have enabled new features in library websites to help make this service more accessible and effective. This article is an evaluation of an experimental pop-up live chat box on the website of a health sciences library to see whether the feature would enhance virtual reference services.

Chatbot Adoption in Tourism Services: A Conceptual Exploration

“…As such, an organization will excel in a domain where it has a learning competence. Take the medical and healthcare industry for example that is currently leading in the adoption of chatbots (Fan, Fought & Gahn, 2017). This is as a result of the need to maintain consistent and standardized customer service due to high volume of customer contact in addition to the conducive atmosphere provided by management in the medical industry.…”

The Marketing Strategy to Increase Gen Z and Millennials' Usability of Asda's Website: A Case Study of ASDA UK

“…Online consumers seek assistance from virtual reference services via email, phone, text, and live chat, according to (Fan et al 2017). Asda should make use of this feature to make its service more accessible, effective, and efficient and to increase its relationship with its target market.…”

On the Origin of Queries: Where Chat Reference Questions Begin

“…As library web page visits grew in the early 2000s, so did researchers' ability to track traffic across pages (Welch, 2007). Visitation pattern analysis enabled academic librarians to strategically expand chat reference options to the most-visited library website pages (Fan, 2017). Several studies document this pattern: expanding chat presence from particular library web pages to discovery layers (Bourgeois & Bealer, 2020;Vogel, 2014), learning management systems (Stieve & Wallace, 2018), and research databases (Franz & Westra, 2014).…”