Background

Chorley Library - part of the Lancashire County Library and Information Service

Lancashire County Library and Information Service is the second largest library service in the United Kingdom, issuing more than 8 million items to a half a million borrowers each year, from 90 locations throughout the county of Lancashire, in the north west of England. Since 2002, Lancashire County Library and Information Service has been using an automated telephone renewals service from TALKINGtech.

TALKINGtech’s i-tiva CONNECT allows borrowers to renew items and access library information by telephone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week via an innovative self-service facility that handles up to 4000 telephone calls every month. In handing over the burden of calls to an automated service, staff are free to concentrate on more essential tasks, such as helping borrowers on the library floor.

Challenge

Over a 12 month period, Lancashire County Library and Information Service can receive over 350,000 requests for the reservation of items. Previously, staff were required to notify borrowers, by phone, that reserved items were ready to collect. When they introduced reservations via the internet, this time-consuming, staff intensive method was replaced with postal data mailers.

Whilst the use of postal data mailers saved staff time, it did not improve service, as Denise Pickup, Lancashire’s Systems Officer explains: “We discovered that there could be a delay of several days before the notices were received in some areas”. Glyn Sinar, Lancashire’s Systems Manager describes the challenge this presented: “We were looking to make savings, not only in terms of time but also in terms of postage and efficiency”.

Solution

Having successfully implemented i-tiva CONNECT, Lancashire County Library and Information Service was familiar with the benefits that automated telephone systems could provide the library. After becoming aware of the new challenge faced by Lancashire, TALKINGtech introduced i-tiva MESSAGE, an outbound automated telephone messaging service that allowed the delivery of notifications by telephone call or text message.

Lancashire County Library and Information Service implemented i-tiva MESSAGE for reserved item notifications as of March 2007. Borrowers who had registered a valid landline telephone number would receive a professionally recorded voice message, that would inform them that the items they had reserved were ready to be collected and from which branch. Alternatively, borrowers who had registered a mobile phone number would receive the same message via text messaging on their mobile telephone.

Lancashire upgraded their existing i-tiva CONNECT service to allow for an additional four telephone lines to deliver the reserved item notifications by voice message. The additional lines enable Lancashire to deliver approximately 200 messages per hour as well as delivering reservation notices by text message via the TALKINGtech SMS gateway.

Results

During the first six months of using i-tiva MESSAGE, the number of reservation requests had increased 11% compared to the same period in the previous year, yet delivery of notifications by post was down by almost half.

Now over 52% of reservation notices are delivered by voice or text message. The implementation of i-tiva MESSAGE had met the two key goals of reducing cost and improving the speed of delivery for reservation notices. As Glyn comments: “Cost savings have been substantial - we’re looking at about 30p saved per notice. In addition to the cost savings, notices are now being received within a day rather than two to three days it took via post.”

In order to maximise the effectiveness of the service, Lancashire County Library and Information Service plans to introduce the delivery of notices for overdue items via i-tiva MESSAGE. By using voice and text messages, Lancashire is expected to realise over £40,000 per annum in savings. These savings will be used to further enhance the outstanding library services on offer to Lancashire residents.

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