In the modern day and age, there is usually no need for a phone book or operator. How are they still around?
In: Technology
Imagine you’re at a big event or in an emergency situation where many people are calling at the same time. Just like traffic lights help manage the flow of cars on the road, telephone operators help manage the flow of phone calls. They make sure that everyone’s call gets through smoothly and efficiently.
They may still exist, but maybe less than 5% as many as in the past. Just because they still exist doesn’t mean they exist in anywhere near the numbers they once did.
Not everyone is able to look up numbers on the Internet. People have disabilities that makes it hard to browse the Internet or even do simple searches. You likely know some of them, maybe an older family member. A lot of these rely on being able to call an operator. Maybe not every day but it is a very important service for them.
Are they not? What do you mean by telephone operators?
I’ve talked to people who act as secretaries, to control the flow and direct me to the right people. Like, I can’t call the CEO of a company if I have a problem with their product. I’ll call someone who will transfer me to the right department. Or when you call an emergency line, or the police, etc.
That’s basically a secretary (by any other name), not what I would call a telephone operator in the historic sense.
Telephone operators, as in, people you call and ask them to connect you with a specific person because you don’t know their number directly, don’t exist anymore – if they do, I’ve never talked to one in my entire life.
Very short ELI5 version: because while there’s usually no need, sometimes there is, and the phone is too important of a public service to let those sometimes slip through the cracks.
Longer version:
There are two types of telephone operators: the first is private businesses, and the second is telecommunications companies. There are 4600 total, with 550 in the employ of the telecos, and keep in mind that means that there are usually less than 1,000 on duty everywhere on any given time, as they will work 40 hours out of a 168 hour week: [Telephone Operators (bls.gov)](https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes432021.htm)
An operator serves the important function of being able to know and have information inside of an organization to route a call in a manner and speed that machines can not yet replace. You’ll notice that the vast majority of them are in the medical profession, where a facility would need to connect a call to somebody with a certain skill very quickly, and the normal method of calling a primary, seeing if they pick up, then a secondary, and so on, until you find somebody, ends up being very inefficient, and doesn’t allow for situations where all people in a specialty may be occupied and unable to answer a call.
Usually, this work is done by a receptionist, but at a large enough organization, you have a dedicated operator to connect the call. The same happens with the 550 involved in traveler accommodation, and I’ve spoken to one of them when working with Disney Parks and Resorts – the agent and their supervisor didn’t know where or how to transfer me to where I needed to go, so they got a telephone operator to re-route the call for them.
The telephone companies still employ them for a different reason: they’re required to provide an operator assistance service for people who still rely on it, as the public switched telephone network (PSTN) is very highly regulated to ensure it keeps working as a public service. You say it yourself in your post, there is, “usually no need for a phone book or operator,” – but sometimes there is. Elderly blind people, for instance, and making important connections in a hurry, like connecting you to poison control while you’re panicking about your child ingesting something.
There MUST be demand for it or it wouldn’t exist. Phone companies aren’t doing it for kicks and giggles. My boss’ wife has an iPhone, with Internet ya know, and she insists on using 411 to get numbers.
The computerized call routing systems are good at cutting all the work out from samey tasks but they poop their pants and have to be babystepped through new / uncommon tasks.
If I have a medical emergency the phone robot is great at routing my call to the nearest 911 dispatch, if I am on a call with my friend across the country and it sounds like they have had a medical emergency I am shit out of luck as the phone robot needs individual instructions to deliberately route my call from the local exchange to the remote exchange then to the correct dispatch center and as an end consumer I don’t know those commands and would have to look up a bunch of details to find the dispatch center to call directly without the routing hops. The phone operators know the commands to enter and can interpret human requests like “can you transfer me to an operator in this state/province”.
Similarly most phone trees have an operator option as it is frustrating or slow to keep climbing the tree only to reach a dead end as the branch did not have what you wanted/need.
I am old enough to remember phone operators. My dad never dialed a number or looked one up in the phone book. If he had to make a call he would just dial 0 and ask the operator to look up the number and please dial it for him. Sorta like how boomers are with computers to day.
I remember about 20 years ago calling the operator to ask what time it was just because we were stupid kids and thought it was funny. But they politely told us. Two years later they’d basically tell us to fuck off, they sealed their own fate!
Emergency services. In this modern day and age, I wouldn’t trust an AI to be able to prioritize what departments need to be at an emergency.
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