I really enjoyed this project. It was good to get a chance to help someone and to learn along the way. I felt like it brought together a lot of what we learned throughout the semester. Below I make note of some of the most important things I learned from this experience. I tried to put them in some kind of order, but really, they are all important to realize as you try to help people find information.
I would say that the most important part of Searcher-Client relations is attitude or persona. You need to get a reading from what the Client is like from your communication with them. This might be more difficult to do if you are communicating though e-mails but there are subtle clues. How officially do their e-mails look? Do they use emotion-cons or smiles? Do they prefer form style formalized e-mails or do they use slang? All of these things tell you something about the user and help you decided the best way to respond to them so that your communication relationship is stable and effective.
If attitude is the most important part of Searcher-Client relations then feedback is the second. Without a stable Searcher-client relationship we will not get the effective feedback we need to know how to proceed with our searches. That said we need to make it clear to Clients that their feedback is important to us, it is necessary for us to proceed with searches and to recall for them the best results we can find. Part of being a good searcher is always asking the Client on more time, is that what you were looking for or is there something else? And be available, let them know they are not being bothersome if they come back to you with another question.
That said I felt I was fortunate to have a client who I knew I could get in touch with easily. She happens to spend a lot of time online, using instant messaging, checking e-mail, and reading my blog. From this I learned that I must have multiple ways to contact a Client whether it be by fax, e-mail, phone, etc. And despite all that effort on my part, if they don't really want my help then they I won't be able to contact them and that can be very frustrating.
Also, it is important to be clear about when the Client need the information. I found that you need to take into consideration the kind of information being sent, the amount, and there for the time it will take to get to the Client and be looked at. Drawing from personal experience, I know I don't read my mail everyday so it makes sense that everyone else doesn't either. I might be a few days or more before we receive any feed back from our Client.
On that note, sometimes Clients need a push, a reminder e-mail or phone call. Some people are not the best at keeping deadlines, or are not the most organized. It is not our job to organize their lives for them, only to provide the information they ask for in a timely and organized manor ourselves, from then on it is up to the Client and how they want to deal with the information we've provided. They may still blame us for failures, but remember it is not our fault.
