The receptionist is alive and well. Only 21 percent of the area’s top 75 private companies in the Providence Business News Book of Lists have an automated attendant answering the phone during business hours, while thirty-three percent of the area’s top public companies do.
Every businessperson knows the frustration of reaching a voice menu when wanting to speak to a live person. The maze of options that are presented can waste more time for the caller than the time it saves for the receptionist.
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“Phone menus are to communication what an enema is to fine dining,” pointed out humorist Dale Dauten in his column, The Corporate Curmudgeon.
“This ‘labor saving’ device saves the organization 10 seconds while sucking 100+ seconds out of the life of a caller,” he said, “That’s cruel efficiency.”
There are kinder efficiencies to be had though. Many of the 79 percent of businesses that had a live receptionist answering the phone said they had inter-office voice mail, and after-hours automated attendants.
David Fogg, president of Providence’s Advanced Communications said that although automated attendants are what most people think of when they hear the phrase ‘voice messaging,’ there are two other important aspects: telephone answering and inter-office voice messaging.
“The other two functions are the powerful ones,” he said, “The productivity is dramatically different.” He pointed out that one of the benefits of telephone answering is that you can find out what you want from a person without ever having to speak directly to one another.
“If the person is not available, it goes into their mailbox, and the caller can leave all the details within the message,” said Fogg, “That person can return the call and get the other person’s voice mail and answer the questions. There’s a possibility that you never have to speak to the other person.”
Inter-office voice messaging is the technology upon which Fogg based his company. Founded in 1988, Advanced Voice started out as a service bureau, providing an intermediary human that people could call to leave or listen to messages. The company filed for a patent in 1996 with a new technology they developed, where they could provide this service, without a human, and without equipment. Any Advanced Communications customer can leave a message for anybody within their company system or check their messages from anywhere, at anytime.
“We provide voice messaging as an outsourcing,” he said, “Customers don’t have to own, operate or manage any equipment. As far as I know, we’re the only company in the world that can do this without having equipment.”
He reported that his company hooks up anywhere from 130 to 200 companies per year. They use their own technology along with an Octel system, which is one of the more popular voice messaging system innovators. Octel has been a part of the multi-million dollar Lucent Technologies since 1997.
“The bottom line is that voice messaging is a productivity-enhancing tool. It’s there to help you do jobs better,” he said. “I can’t think of an industry today that doesn’t utilize it.” He mentioned how he advises service companies against the automated attendant.
Sandy Bodell, IT director at Cooley Group, one of the private companies that does have an automated attendant, said, “A receptionist can do a lot more than just answering the phones. This is more cost efficient for the company.”
He went on to say that Cooley provides the option to press zero at any time to get out of the maze and speak to a live person, and recently added a direct inward dial function to make it easier to get in touch with the targeted person. Direct inward dial can be used if the caller knows the extension of the person they are trying to reach; then, he or she can dial that person directly by dialing the company’s 721 exchange and the person’s 4-digit extension.
CVS headquarters, one of the public companies that has an automated attendant, has had a variation of the system it now has for about 15 years. Dave Burton, manager, telecommunications explained, “I think most people calling into corporate expect it.”
Marianne DeChambeau of UNICOM agreed, “We don’t get much feedback, so I guess no news is good news.”
UNICOM has only had the automated attendant for two years. Prior to this the Providence-based technology consulting company only had voice mail. “The company was expanding so fast that the call volume exploded,” DeChambeau said.
She then explained how UNICOM’s marketing manager Lee Rush, an amateur theatre person who had taken professional voice lessons, did much of the voice work for the company’s Novell-based system. The on-hold portion of the system was done by a Minnesota-based company called Telestyle Impressions.
Telestyle allows its customers to choose a male or female narrator, talking intermittently about the business and how your call will be answered shortly between snippets of music. A Telestyle customer can not only choose from 16 different styles of music, ranging from “old-country” to “smooth jazz”, but they can also select the tempo of the music and the expression for narration. The choices in the latter category are “easy going,” “formal,” “cheerful,” “upbeat” and “OTHER”.
When asked if the narrators ever do wacky clown voices for the “OTHER” category, Telestyle President Jim Mehle said his company has done some character work, but, “on hold hasn’t been something where you need to be real creative. You’ve already got the caller’s attention, and it’s real unfortunate that they have to hold, and in most cases we don’t want the caller to feel like they’re listening to a big commercial.”
Mehle explained that the company, which has been in business since 1992 gets most of its clients, which are primarily business to business companies, from referrals. Telestyle has an in-house studio, and under 10 employees recording these messages. Over the past few years they have shifted from a tape loop to a new technology that hooks up to a client’s location via modem, and does digital file transfer.
“With more companies using an automated attendant,” said Mehle, explaining the demand for Telestyle’s services, “and somebody presses 1 for sales, you don’t want to keep them there waiting.”
UNICOM receptionist Peggy Mimnaugh said that for the most part she likes the voice mail system and on-hold services, and doesn’t feel that all of this automated technology puts her job in jeopardy.
“You always need humans in the end,” she said.
