Library Budget Analysis: Checking the Math on Staffing for Patron Service
How a detailed review confirmed the highest value and most cost-effective option for staffing solutions for this library system
Growing pains for staffing this Texas library
When one of Texas’ fastest growing communities needed to meet the staffing needs of their expanding patron base, they needed help, and fast. With more residents came more questions, more calls, and more chats. They wanted to maintain their high standards without wearing out their existing staff.
They had options. They could have hired new staff, but that would have required hundreds of thousands of dollars in training, salaries, benefits, if they could even have found qualified candidates that meshed with the team and community.
Instead of trying to hire a new call answering team and field every call themselves, they turned to a hosted, live-answer call center to support their community. That was in 2016, and they remain a Unique customer to this day.
It wasn’t a blind leap. When making the decision to either hire on staff or partner with Unique, the library ran an analysis and realized outsourcing made the most financial and operational sense. And in 2024, they decided to check again – to make sure the numbers still added up for 2025 and beyond.
The Challenge: Balancing Quality, Fiscal Responsibility, and Staffing Needs
Libraries everywhere face the same tough question:
How do we give patrons great service without overloading staff or draining the budget?
The library knew they had to look closely at their investment. Were they still making the right call by outsourcing? Could they justify the cost year after year? To get answers, they dug into the data.
The Analysis
This review was not about reducing staff, but about ensuring the library’s investment remained the best choice for both patrons and the budget. The goal was to confirm that resources were being used in ways that best supported staff capacity and freed them to focus on higher-value patron interactions.
To do this, they partnered with Unique to conduct a detailed review. Together, they used an advanced call center model that examined the real data: call and chat volumes, library hours, and the staffing levels that would be needed to cover that demand.
Think of it like looking under the hood of a car – instead of relying on estimates, it provided a clear, data-driven picture of what was actually happening. With that information, the library could confidently make a fair comparison between managing call handling in-house and continuing its partnership with Unique.
The Results
Cost Savings: 80% Saved in Wages Alone
Here’s what the analysis revealed:
- To match Unique’s performance, the library would need 9 additional full-time staff.
- Wages alone for those positions would hit about $500,000 a year.
- And that’s just base pay. No benefits. No PTO coverage. No supervisors, training programs, hardware, software, or phone systems included. Once you add all that? The cost would balloon even higher.
By comparison, their ongoing partnership with Unique costs just $95,000 annually. That’s more than an 80% savings in wages alone – plus all the extra value of not having to manage the overhead.
The Highlights
35,000+
Annual Interactions
71.9
NPS Score
>$500,000
Annual Savings
Relieving the Staffing Burden: Thousands of Hours Freed Up
Unique handled over 34,000 interactions on behalf of the library in 2025. Since the inception of the service, Unique has saved the library 11,726 staff hours. That’s time that staff have not been drawn away from their patrons, time that they can use on tasks in front of them.
How could your staff use new time that they previously didn’t have?
Patron Satisfaction: 15,000 5-Star Reviews
Of course, money isn’t the only metric that matters. What about the people actually calling and chatting in?
The answer is clear: patrons are thrilled. With over 27,000 calls and 7,500 chats answered in a year, and over 225,000 interactions since the partnership began, the library’s community gets timely help without long waits or endless voicemail loops. And it shows up in the numbers – their Net Promoter Score (NPS) sits well above industry benchmarks
Since beginning service, the NPS Score is 71.9
Compared to other industries, that is a world-class rating.
Nearly a decade into the partnership, satisfaction hasn’t dipped. If anything, it’s grown stronger because patrons know they can rely on consistent, high-quality service every time they reach out.
Why it still makes sense
After more than eight years, the library’s partnership with Unique Library’s Patron Services Call Center has stood the test of time. The numbers back it up. The patron experience backs it up. And the staff hours saved make it a win across the board.
The Bottom Line: Why Maintaining Patron Service Works:
- Huge wage and overhead savings compared to hiring in-house staff.
- No headaches from scheduling, PTO, turnover, or training cycles.
- Reliable technology, supervision, and QA baked right in.
- Consistency. Patrons always get someone knowledgeable on the other end of the line.
By validating the decision with a detailed analysis of real data – not guesswork – this example proved that outsourcing isn’t just sustainable. It’s a long-term strategy for excellent service and responsible stewardship.