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From: blake@pro-party.cts.com (Blake Farenthold)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Info on Hotel PBX's Wanted
Message-ID: <9797@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 16 Jul 90 20:27:16 GMT
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In-Reply-To: message from davep@u.washington.edu

>The system would then ring the room.  If there was no answer, it could take a
>voice mail message,...activate the guest's message light, and allow the guest
>to retrieve the message, as though the guest had a personal answering
>machine

[now for today's Farenthold telecomm horror story]

A service similar to what you described is/was in place at the Westin
Gallaria in Houston.  If there was no answer in your room you'd go
back to the operator who'd ask if you wanted to leave a message. If
so, she'd then transfer you to a voice mail box which recorded your
message and was SUPPOSED to light up your message light.

There were several problems with this arrangement, however.  The most
annoying was it didn't always light your message light.  I was in the
hotel three nights. The first day the system seemed to work fine.  I
didn't get any messages the second day.  The third day my message came
on and I had three messages, two of which were datestamped with the
previous day.  I was HOT.  Fortunantly the calls were friends wanting
to buy me dinner, not clients ... but it was still a bad showing for
the hotel.  I felt bad complaining pecause I like to see new
technologies expanding new places but it really hacked me off that I
missed the message.

I think the problem was HUMAN ERROR.  There was FAR too much human
intervention in the process.  When there was no answer instead of
going AUTOMATICALLY to the Voice Mail box you went to an operator
first.  I suspect it was the operator who forgot tt turn on the
message waiting light.  You also had to go through an operator to
retreive my messages ('could you connect me to my voice mailbox
please' always got a strange reaction ... not sure if she didn't know
the voice mailboxes were their messaging system or if she was
surprised I knew their messaging system was a voice mail box.  The
boxes lacked good prompts so I never figured out how to retrieve saved
messages (I wonder what the person who got the message I accidently
forwarded thought?)  I wonder if my old messages are still there,
months later, taking up disk space.

On a side note: Our Office phone system is an old ITT 2100. Is there
an auto attendant that will work with it that has the 'type in the
user's name using the letters on the phone' option?  Seems like a
great idea for after hours calls.  


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Internet: blake@pro-party.cts.com


Blake Farenthold         | Voice: 800/880-1890     |    MCI: BFARENTHOLD
1200 MBank North         |   Fax: 512/889-8686     |    CIS: 70070,521
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