IS THIS THE PERSON TO WHOM I AM SPEAKING? MAYBE, MAYBE NOT

Machines blended with the human touch to serve customers

Back in the mid-'80s I was in the habit of going into the paper early Sunday mornings. When you work at an afternoon paper that switches to a.m. for the Sunday cycle, there are few moments in the week when you can be alone at the office.

Actually, in those days there were eight hours – between 1 a.m. and 9 a.m. Sunday. (I wasn't craving solitude; as the computer guru, to install software I needed to stop and start the system and Sunday morning was the only time I didn't make everyone's life miserable.)

So, as it was, I was driving into work around 6 one Sunday and paused at an intersection of one of the main drags to heed the flashing yellow signal. I looked south and saw nothing; I looked north and about a mile away, saw about 1000 fire engines.

Now, despite the fact I had been relegated to computer gurudom, that didn't mean I'd lost my news instinct: I drove north to see what was happening.

I found a major hotel ablaze. In actuality, it was about two dozen fire engines and probably 100 firefighters. I got out of my car and ran around the block, talking to bystanders along the way, and it finally struck me – there were no TV news crews, no photographers and no reporters.

I found a pay phone and called the paper's main number. The operator answered and I identified myself.

"What can I do for you, honey?" she asked. Had she heard about this fire? No, she said.

Since I was a Sunday morning habitué, I knew the names of the reporters, photographers and assistant city editor who were on that shift; I certainly didn't know their home phone numbers.

The operator did.

I told her to call them at home and tell them there was a hotel burning down and to get their butts down there. When reporters arrived, I briefed them and went to the office (hey, I may be a journalist, but I'm mostly a deskman).

We got exclusive pictures and a three-hour start on a major story, mostly because there was a phone operator working at 6 a.m. on Sunday.

Inside, Senior Editor Pete Wetmore takes a look at automated phone answering systems and how newspapers use them to serve customers. Though these labor-saving devices can be a real boon to the efficiency of a newspaper, many of the papers that Wetmore surveyed haven't taken the opportunity to use them.

Wetmore chats with phone automation adherents and those favoring the old ways – having an actual person answer the phone. He focuses on the notion of the external customer and how newspapers are ensuring that that person is served, and served well.

I immediately thought of that hotel fire: The customers who benefit the most from a phone operator are the internal customers – in this case, the newsroom. The operators at the paper in those days knew every newsroom person by name. They could – and would – track down people for you. In a dire emergency, an operator would call all the bars in a two-mile radius of the paper to find a missing reporter.

In my role as the designated geek, I found that if I told the operators that I didn't want to be bothered for minor system problems ("How do I get the dots off my screen?"), I wasn't called at home. Major problems were routed straight through, though.

The operators were both protectors and facilitators, communicators and knowledge banks.

After I left the paper, the Powers That Be decided that an automated system was the way to go and they laid off most of the operators. An automated system routed callers around the building – if they were lucky. Many gave up calling the paper because it was too frustrating.

As a newspaper executive with a multitude of customers – readers, advertisers and newsroom people – you've got to realize how little you save when you eliminate this content from the paper:

"What can I do for you, honey?"

– David M. Cole

Inside ...