All voice mail questions are reviewed before answering any. Some may be
able to be forwarded to other units before any are answered. Others may be
able to be rejected, because they clearly don’t fall within the stated guidelines
of the service. This will also give you an idea of how many Orbis look-ups
and other relatively straightforward inquiries there are. Messages which aren’t
rejected or forwarded in this initial review are Kept.
Working with incoming messages
Press 2 to Answer a message immediately after hearing it (this feature
cannot be used once the message has been Kept).
Press 3 to Discard a message.
Press 4 to forward (Give) a message to another phone number. For courtesy,
append at least the message "This inquiry is being forwarded from Sterling
Reference".
Press 5 to Keep a message.
Working with Kept messages
Transcribing questions
Go through the Kept messages and transcribe each onto a Voice Mail reference
sheet, noting the date and time the message was left and the date and time
it was retrieved. Delete the inquiry after you’ve transcribed it.
Go through the inquiries and answer first, in the order they were received,
all those requiring a minimum amount of work. Note the date and time each
question was answered with a call back to the inquirer.
Then return to work on the harder or lengthier questions.
Leave those questions you don’t get to on the clipboard for the next person,
making sure that the person is aware there are questions waiting.
As the day progresses
The light on the top of the phone instrument will light when a message has
been left. To access reference email, dial 2-8000 and enter the voice mail
password.
Each person at the Reference Desk is responsible for listening to and answering
voice mail messages that may be left, following the procedures outlined in
1., above.
Statistics and completed forms
Record statistics on the existing desk statistics sheet
This will record number received, rejected, forwarded, and answered
Leave completed transcription sheets in the box in BBG with completed reference
desk statistics sheets.
© 2007 Yale University Library