On 6/14/06, Joshua Neff <jneff_at_olatheks.org> wrote:
> 3) Patrons new to our system frequently need assistance in locating items in
> our catalog, especially if it involves anything beyond a basic title or
> author search, but the assistance is usually only for small problems which
> are easily solved.
In my dayjob, we have an online store with a large catalog of
products. So many products that finding the right product is a real
problem, not least because our customers aren't that familiar with the
nuances of the products.
(Sounds a bit like library patrons, no?)
I routinely hear fellow employees (consider these in-branch patrons)
having trouble finding their product on the store, and appealing to
our resident catalog expert for assistance.
Of course, the people, you know, using it online, and not in the
branch, are probably having the same problems, but don't have access
to a resident specialist (modulo Ask A Librarian, which I admit is
better than our customer's access to our catalog specialist).
I'm sure we lose a lot of sales that way. But it's a soft cost, and
we don't hear too often from people that weren't able to find the
product. It's easy to forget about them.
I've never convinced our expert (or the business owner) that there's a
problem to be solved.
Received on Wed Jun 14 2006 - 17:20:21 EDT