one last time with the questionpoint widget now

Since putting the QuestionPoint widget on some of our pages, we've had patrons use it 11 times, with only 4 of those sessions resulting in an actual conversation between the patron and librarian.

The average wait time for patrons connecting to us with the QuestionPoint widget was 3 minutes, 52 seconds, more than twice as long as sessions overall (1 minute, 38 seconds). Of the 4 where there were actual conversations, the wait times were 18, 20, 84 and 594 seconds, or 3 minutes even on average.

Granted, this is very little data compared to the 484 "regular" chat sessions in the past week. I'm going to give this until the end of the month and see if another dozen or so questions can reverse the trend, and if not, I'll take it down.

I think the QuestionPoint widget might be useful for a single library, or small group of libraries that does not already have a busy virtual reference service, does not expect one, and for whatever reason chooses not to go with MeeboMe, Plugoo, AIM Wimzi, Hab.la, or LibraryH3lp. If your virtual reference service is already busy, QuestionPoint's widget only offers poor service to patrons that try to use it.