Chat operators sometimes struggle to find a communication style that balances approachability and warmth with professionalism and authority. Both formal and informal communication styles have benefits and drawbacks that may affect patron satisfaction. Research by Waugh (2013) has shown that 17- to 25-year olds perceive formal language in virtual reference interactions as a sign of competency and trustworthiness, but it can also come across as robotic, impersonal, or condescending. Conversely, informality can signify positive characteristics like approachability and enthusiasm, or negative ones like inexperience. Maness (2008) found that there is a correlation between the use of informal language by librarians and satisfaction among 18- to 24-year old college students, and that mirroring the patron’s use of contractions, double punctuation, ellipses, and capitalization is an effective approach to chat reference conversations. However, research by Christopherson (2011) found that librarians in the study were not mirroring patrons’ more informal cyberlanguage enough.

In light of this mixed evidence, it may be difficult for chat operators to decide how to communicate with users and for chat service managers to decide if communication style should be part of a service’s training and policy. This presentation reports on a study of 450 chat transcripts from a collaborative chat reference service in Ontario, Canada. We compared exit survey responses to users’ academic status and the query type with formality as a confounding variable. Findings indicate that formality can make a difference to avoiding dissatisfaction for undergraduates and during research-intensive questions. These factors were not significantly correlated with satisfaction. We conclude, therefore, that an operator’s choice to communicate either more formally or informally will not make users more satisfied with their experience, but it can help avoid them leaving dissatisfied.