In the modern day and age, there is usually no need for a phone book or operator. How are they still around?
In: Technology
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.
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