Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!rutgers!texbell!chinacat!telecom-gateway From: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: AT&T Operator Handling of International DA Message-ID: Date: 29 Nov 89 06:16:18 GMT Sender: news@chinacat.Lonestar.ORG Lines: 86 Approved: telecom-request@chinacat.lonestar.org X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 535, message 1 of 7 I never cease to be amazed at the careless and sometimes ignorant handling of international calls for directory assistance by AT&T Operators. Maybe Chicago is an exception to the rule. Maybe every other city in the USA with an AT&T Operating Center has nice, pleasant, well-trained operators with good diction and an understanding of international telephone customs. Is there anyone here besides me old enough to remember White Plains, NY and the well-trained operators who handled international traffic in the 1950 - 1960 period? At my place of full time employment, I work for a firm of attornies, or else they all work for me, I forget which. I talk to clients of our firm around the world almost every day. When the difference in times is too dramatic, i.e. Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and India -- ah yes! -- India! -- I take the file home with me, set my alarm clock for 0300 hours, get out of bed, go sit in my office at home and call India or wherever, to exhort and harangue people in far away places to pay their bills or settle whatever grievance our client may have with them. **Getting the phone number is ninety percent of the battle!** Directory Assistance in some countries -- India comes to mind -- is the absolute pits. Compound that with what passes for an AT&T Operator these days, and thirty minutes can easily pass just getting the number! No two operators handle it the same way: some insist on making twice the work, by requiring me to give them all the details of the person or business I am trying to reach. I have to spell it two or three times for them. Then, and only then, they try to reach Delhi, only to dial three times, and three times in a row get the response, 'your international call cannot be completed at this time in the country you are calling', meaning all circuits busy. So we have wasted five minutes because the operator was never trained as in the olden days to do what is called 'overlap'; that is, set up the connection to DA and collect the information from the caller while waiting for Delhi to respond. Tuesday night I spent 27 minutes, with *seven different attempts* trying to get DA in Delhi. One operator attempted six times, and six times in a row got intercepted with 'your call cannot be completed as dialed', which she insisted to me meant all circuits were busy. When another operator did finally get a circuit to Delhi, and had collected all the information from me after several painful attempts, she sat there screaming at Delhi to the point it became an embarassment to me: 'Hello New Delhi! This is the United States!!!! We want Directory Assistance!!!!! Hello, can you hear me!!!!!!!!!!!!' Her ethnic accent was terrible, her diction very poor, and the poor operator in Delhi kept screaming back that she could not understand what it was we wanted. The AT&T Operator was spelling the name wrong, mispronouncing the section of of the city, and not letting me get a word in edgewise. Finally, Delhi abandoned the call, my operator tried again, got an NC condition four times in a row and told me to try some other time. And this is not a rare occurance. It is a daily thing for me. AT&T wants to be a leader in international calls, yet there is no provision for direct-dial directory assistance; many operators are very poorly trained, and the customer is always wrong and knows nothing of what he speaks. Do any operators speak a second language? No! Do any realize how phone systems work in other countries? No! Apparently AT&T quit training their operators with anything other than a simple knowledge of how to press a few buttons sometime around thirty years ago. Why did they get rid of the White Plains international operators several years ago? Why did they dispense with Pittsburg a few years ago? And if I wrote a letter of complaint tomorrow to the Chairman I would receive back a reply in a few days; not from the Chairman, mind you, but from some highly-placed flunky authorized to respond in his name, thanking me and apologizing. And what would change? Nothing! Yet AT&T keeps wondering why their long-time customers are abandoning them in droves. Maybe they could reverse the trend if they would take the people in the front ranks -- the people who deal with customers day in and day out -- the operators and service representatives -- and train them properly. At least that would be a start. Patrick Townson