Reference interviews and the computing center help desk
Authors: Kristin M. Evenson
Venue: Proceedings of the 16th annual ACM SIGUCCS Conference on User Services (1988)

How often does the help desk forward a call to you, the spreadsheet expert, when they should have sent it to the database expert? Has anyone ever replied to one of your brilliant problem resolutions with &ldquo;but that isn't what I wanted!&rdquo;? All consultants know the frustration of talking to someone at length, discovering only after several minutes that they've been answering the wrong question. Still, much of the training for computing center user support focuses on technical knowledge. Consultants often view the interchange between user and consultant as more of an art than a science. Consultants devote their limited training time to learning new systems; they count users to measure their success. However, computer consultants can train themselves to interact more efficiently with users and can find new ways to evaluate their work. Users will benefit from better-focused consulting. Consultants will spend less time thrashing through misunderstandings, enjoying more time to work on actual problems. We can begin by using reference librarians as a model. You might wonder what computing consultants can learn from librarians. After all, the library is an long-established institution, familiar and friendly. The computing center, now&mdash;there's the cutting edge, unknown and frightening. However, novice users need expert guides to the information resources in both environments. Both computing center and library users become anxious when they must search out specific information. They don't know how to ask for help; they don't know what information they should provide in order to get the best assistance. Computing center users seem to sidle up to their main question. For example, a secretary asks about features of the LaserJet II when she wants to know how to get landscape printing on their old LaserJet. Similarly, library users approach the reference librarian with questions only obliquely related to their real aim. An anxious student asks for gardening books when his report on pesticides is due tomorrow. Neither reference librarians nor computing center consultants can train users to ask better questions. However, reference librarians have developed a set of techniques which they use to discover their users' actual information needs. Librarians use the term &ldquo;reference interview&rdquo; to refer to the transaction between the person seeking information and the person providing information. After the initial contact, the librarian controls the interview, asking questions designed to discover the user's real question. The length of the reference interview depends on the complexity of the problem and the ability of the user to define the question. Computing center consultants can easily apply reference interview techniques to their interactions with users. Listen to this quote from a reference service textbook: &ldquo;Many people are not aware that information of interest or of use to them is generally available in libraries.&rdquo; &ldquo;As a reference librarian, one has accepted the responsibility of answering questions pleasantly, speedily, accurately, and, as nearly as possible, to the satisfaction of the inquirer.&rdquo; (Thomas, p.95) Change &ldquo;library&rdquo; to &ldquo;computing center&rdquo; and change &ldquo;reference librarian&rdquo; to &ldquo;user consultant&rdquo; and you have a goal statement suitable to any computing center help desk. A computing center help desk is very like a library reference desk. Both computing consultants and reference librarians answer users' questions. Both may use encounters with users to teach them how to use library or computing center resources. Both struggle with similar problems of inarticulate users, inadequate resources, and burned-out staff. Several factors exacerbate the communication difficulties. Novice computer users don't know the jargon. They are scared of computers, or angry because they don't like feeling ignorant. They don't want to become computer experts; they just want to do their work. Often they feel pressured by deadlines. They don't have time to become acquainted with their system; they need to produce work now. Librarians face similar difficulties. Library users don't understand the classification systems. They don't want to become librarians. They just want information and resent having to ask for help. Just as novice computer users don't want to admit ignorance, library users don't want to admit that they don't know how to use the library. Often they suffer the same time pressures; their paper is due tomorrow and they need information right now. Computing center consultants can adopt most reference interview techniques unchanged, using reference librarians' work as a model to train and evaluate help desk staff. However, there are some obstacles to effortless use of the reference interview. Some consultants may feel that the differences between reference librarians and computer user consultants outweigh the similarities. Others would argue that we cannot define the reference interview clearly enough to apply these techniques in any structured way. Finally, reference interview training and evaluation will demand time. These objections are valid. Computing centers are different from libraries; computing center consultants will not use reference interview techniques in exactly the same way as reference librarians. The reference interview does sometimes seem to be used as no more than a catch phrase for a grab bag of communication tips. We cannot effectively teach reference interview techniques if we have no more than a list of tips. Even if we can define the reference interview well enough to teach its use, we must add this training to consultants' already overbooked schedules. Evaluating consultants' use of reference interview techniques will require close observation of consultants' work and new methods of evaluation. However, none of these objections outweigh the benefits of the reference interview. People do come to the library help desk for different reasons than they come to the computer center help desk. Library users usually have &ldquo;what&rdquo; questions; they want specific pieces of information. Computer users usually have &ldquo;how&rdquo; questions; they want instructions on how to accomplish some task. Library users want facts; journal citations, articles, and books on a particular subject. Computer users want instruction, problem fixes, disaster recovery, and help with diagnosing problems. However, even when &ldquo;typical&rdquo; computing center users ask different question than &ldquo;typical&rdquo; library users, consultants can use the same reference interview techniques that librarians use. Reference interview techniques help the consultant control the interview in order to more easily discover the specific nature of each user's question. These techniques apply equally well whether users want quantitative or procedural information. The amorphous nature of the reference interview is a more serious obstacle to training and evaluation. The &ldquo;reference interview&rdquo; can degenerate to nothing more than a label for a bunch of communication buzzwords. Computing center staff cannot apply reference interview techniques with measurable success unless they work from a clear definition. The essence of the reference interview is that the information provider controls the interaction in order to best meet the needs of the person who needs the information. I divide the reference interview into three parts: approach, dialogue, and closure. During approach, users decide who to approach and how to state their question. Consultants can control the environment to make it easy for the user to find help, again taking suggestions from library research. Signs should identify the help desk. Both student assistants and full-time consultants may wear name tags or badges. Help desk staff should appear &ldquo;interruptable&rdquo;&mdash;neither completely idle nor completely immersed in some project. Reference interview articles often focus on the many communication techniques used in the second phase of dialogue between the user and the information provider. At the University of Iowa Personal Computing Support Center, we emphasize three techniques with our student workers: attending to the user, prompting for more information, and checking for mutual understanding. During the dialogue, consultants depend on their general knowledge to recognize common problems and make connections which the novice user cannot. If unchecked by careful use of the reference interview, this ability to jump to the correct conclusion betrays both the consultant and the users. Dazzled users think that consultants magically solve their problems with almost no information. Consultants may jump too fast, giving users the right answers to the wrong questions. Careful attention to the user and checking for mutual understanding minimizes these problems. The consultant must close the interview so that both the consultant and the user have the same understanding. During closure, the consultant makes sure that the user understands the answer and that both have the same expectations of any follow-up. In an ideal world, every reference interview ends with a satisfied user. In our imperfect reality, some users will not accept our answers. Consultants can borrow techniques from reference librarians to work with problem users. The last and most serious obstacle to using reference interview techniques is the need for new methods of training and evaluation. Somehow consultants must find time to develop training, schedule training sessions, and evaluate their use of these techniques. With new software and hardware, consultants can accomplish much on their own if they are just given machine, manual, and disks. Reference interview techniques require more structured training. Again, we can draw upon the experience of reference librarians and use a variety of methods to train consultants to use reference interview techniques. Combinations of case studies and role-playing work well for many, especially if combined with videotaping. Concentrating on one technique at a time seems to work better than trying to teach every possible skill; this also allows shorter sessions which you can more easily fit into busy schedules. Applying reference interview techniques will help consultants improve their work with users. Consultants must also devise new methods of evaluating their work in order to prove to themselves and to their management that the time spent on reference interview techniques is worthwhile. In most computing centers, consultants religiously record each contact with a user. Their managers want to see numbers &mdash; preferably increasing numbers. Bigger numbers indicate that the consultants have accomplished more and thus deserve a bigger share of the budget. The consultants know that other departments within the computing center supply statistics to the administration, and that the consultants had better supply statistics that are just as good. Thus consultants keep logs to mark each time they talk to a user. They break down contacts into telephone and walk-in; they code each for the subject of the question and categorize each by status of user. Consultants may decide to record not just each person, but each question asked by each person. After all, just one person may ask about using footnotes in Word, transferring Macintosh files to a DOS diskette, and recovering erased files. Shouldn't that count as three? They also note the start and stop time of each contact. Each quarter the consultants transform their tickmarks into glowing reports of the multitudes who have benefited from the computing center help desk. However, these reports to the managers don't do that much for the consultants. The quantity of work may not impress the managers. Some managers who find the statistics impressive may keep their impression to themselves, giving no reward to the consultants. Those managers who do reward the consultants often give them rewards that increase the workload. They find money in the budget for more student workers &mdash; who must be trained. They provide a local area network &mdash; which must be installed and maintained. They give everyone new software &mdash; which the consultants must somehow find time to learn and then use their learning as the basis for more consulting and classes. Even when these quarterly stacks of statistics do bring rewards, they do not help the consultants or the managers truly evaluate their work. Numbers of users seen does not invariably correlate with numbers of problems solved. Measuring numbers alone tells the computing center much about increasing demand and peak usage times, but it tells nothing about the quality of computing center services. Consultants must devise new methods to evaluate their work, educate their managers to use these new evaluation methods, and generate their own rewards for effective work. In order to develop adequate measures, consultants must decide why they consult and exactly what they do when they consult. They should know how their private purposes fit the computing center's official statement of purpose. Many computing centers set forth the goal of greater productivity through computing and their consultants spread the gospel across campus. Many consultants encourage users to become self-sufficient &mdash; either to see the fledglings fly away from the nest or to shoo away the pests. Some encourage dependency, protecting each tender novice from the awful complexities of computing. Some consult only because they happened to find this job and they don't want to search for another right now. As they consider their reasons for consulting, the consultants should observe their daily work. Consulting services vary widely; within one computing center the individual consultants provide different services, which should be evaluated differently. One consultant may teach no classes but spend twenty hours per week visiting departments to provide on-site assistance. Each consultant should list his or her activities &mdash; writing articles, teaching seminars, help desk services, etc. Once they have developed a statement of purpose and a list of activities, the consultants can devise methods to evaluate their work. Each activity calls for a different tool of evaluation. Each tool should be chosen to answer two questions: &ldquo;Does x (a particular technique) accomplish y (my reason for consulting)? How well does it accomplish it?&rdquo; For example, consultants may use feedback questionnaires and tests to answer these questions about their seminars. Obviously, the simple recording of numbers takes less time than this meditation on purpose, listing of activities, and then evaluation of activities according to how well they accomplish the purpose. Consultants often feel they have barely enough time to note one user contact before the next approaches. Few managers encourage overworked consultants to take time for detailed evaluation. However, consultants can develop meaningful evaluations of their work a little at a time. While they continue to supply their managers with numbers, they can also select one activity to evaluate for a set time. The results of these evaluations, added to the usual statistics, will show their concern with quality as well as quantity. The consultants should demonstrate that these evaluations help the computing center accomplish its formally stated goals. This will encourage their managers both to see the value of evaluation and to appropriately reward the consultants. The evaluations point out where consultants need to improve their work and where they should receive rewards. Part of the consultants' reward will lie in knowing that they have reached users. Few consultants derive much pleasure from knowing that they talked to thirty users per day this quarter compared to twenty-two per day last quarter. Most want to know they make a difference to at least some of those users. Merely recording the number of users who came to the help desk does not tell the consultants whether any of those users left the help desk happier than they came to it. Evaluation provides proof that the consultants actually do help users &mdash; proof that will provide much-needed satisfaction to the consultants. Beyond the intangible reward of personal satisfaction, those consultants who can demonstrate progress toward stated goals are best equipped to suggest suitable rewards to the management. If the consultants can link these rewards to future progress &mdash; the three-day seminar in Boston that will even further improve their consulting, for example &mdash; so much the better. As we hustle to keep track of continuous updates and the constant traffic of users, we can lose sight of our goals. Finding new ways to work with users and new ways to evaluate our work will help us find new enthusiasm for our work.