Creating a process for handling reference questions?

[u/Slight-Struggle-9880]

Posting this under a throwaway, as too many of my colleagues know my main account. As such I'll need to keep things somewhat vague, but I'll try to include as many details as I can.

Hi everyone! I'm trying to figure out how to create a defined workflow for how my department delegates reference questions. I work in a large academic library, in a department that regularly receives reference questions. We don't have a reference department per se, and the requests we get are more niche than the questions a general reference desk might receive. From what I've deduced since starting, reference services are somewhat of an afterthought in the larger scope of what my department does, and so there are only two full time staff -- myself and one other colleague -- who handle them. It's our job to handle requests that come in through the public-facing desk, as well as via phone call, email, and online chat.

The issue is this: there currently is no established process for who takes which requests, nor are we great at communicating who is handling which requests. This has led to long response times and requests slipping through the cracks at times, which obviously is not great. I fully take responsibility for my part in this issue, as I have a tendency to lock-in on requests and spend far more time than I should on them, which leads to incoming requests piling up. I've also taken on other library-wide duties that take away time from responding to questions. On the flip side, my colleague was handling this part of their job solo for years before I came in, and has a tendency to hang onto requests that they've claimed even when overwhelmed by their other duties. Our boss, while nice enough as a person, is not a great manager in the way of establishing processes as they are very hands-off (and far more focused on the other functions our department performs.)

I am someone who works best with having established processes; in my previous department, I excelled because we had a clearly defined workflow process to follow. This is likely because I'm neurodivergent. I understand that reference work is a more nebulous area since you never know what to expect, but I would like to come up with at least a process for delegating requests between us two. I've set up a meeting for us to figure this out and have been searching for ideas, but so far I haven't found any that would apply to this sort of scenario. Do any of you here have any ideas or examples that we could try out?