Do We Take the Time?

I am on the ITS Help Desk and just had a call from a patron who was trying to watch a live TV stream from Access Fort Wayne. They were trying to watch (online) the Board of Public Works, Live. Scheduled for 9:00 am on Channel 58.

At first I was confused. Is there a live stream that isn't working and should I just transfer the caller to Access Fort Wayne? But wait, this goes out from our network so it could be an ITS problem. Being a bit bewildered, I spent some more time with him. I found out he was at the City of Fort Wayne's website and was looking at the schedule for Channel 58. I asked him to walk me through to where he encountered the problem. As I clicked through I ended up at Access Video On the Web. This page has a link to watch CityTV live streams from 1pm to 5pm. Problem solved!

This call made me think of some of the transfers we get. For example I had a call that was transferred because "the person is having trouble connecting". They were actually using their own Internet Service Provider to connect to an E-Resource and were being asked to authenticate to gain access. It was an E-Resource that is only available to users at a library branch or who use our dial up. Another call that I remember that was transferred had to do with a patrons library card account. Why ITS got the transfer beats me. Maybe staff entered our extension by mistake, or the caller asked for the Help Desk. We have several that address specific concerns. I ended up having to transfer the caller to the Circulation Department. These were all questions that could have been answered or appropriately transferred by staff who had the initial contact with the patron.

So what is my point? None really. I just noticed that when I took the time to fully understand what the patron was trying to do. I was then able to give them an appropriate answer. Thus, avoiding transferring them to someone else that would have eventually given them the same answer.

Comments are welcome. Please... be kind. :-)