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Tolmes News Service 19
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# <Tolmes News Service> #
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# > Written by Dr. Hugo P. Tolmes < #
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Issue Number: 19
Release Date: December 20, 1987
Well, here's another issue. Nothing much has been going on lately. I'll just
get to the articles for this issue.
-Hugo-
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TITLE: 'If you need help, press 3'
FROM: The Chicago Tribune
DATE: December 13, 1987
By Christine Winter
"Seasons Greetings from XYZ. If you're calling from a Touch Tone phone and
want to bypass the store operator, press 1 now, or 0 anytime for operator
assistance. If you have a rotary phone, remain on the line for operator
assistance...."
You are in the first stages of having your call "processed." You have a
chance to get out of the computer loop, as some analysts call it, or continue.
Press 1, and the message rolls on, unfailingly polite, and careful to provide
an immediate escape hatch to a human operator.
"Thank you. I fyou know the extension you want, dial it now, or dial the
operator anytime. Or, listen for the department you want, and press that
number anytime during this message. If you want automotive parts, press 1;
catalogue, press 2; furniture or major appliances, press 3..."
That's your category, so to get another directory for furniture and
appliances, you press 3.
"Thank you. If you want furniture, press 1; TVs, VCRs or stereos, press 2;
sewing machines or vacuums, press 3; refrigeration or laundry equipment, press
4; ranges, microwaves or dishwashers, press 5."
Appoximately 1.2 million calls in the U.S. are answered each day by a
computerized message that is some variation of the above.
Some users are offended, some are confused, but proponenents of the
automated devices say that most eventually become comfortable with the
systems. A few users even learn to love them, they say.
The latest technology in call handling is a combination of three separate
features that are gradually being integrated into one system that includes
automatic answering, voice messaging and voice response.
An example of automatic answering is the above suburban retail store,
where a call is answered and routed to the correct department by offering the
caller a series of options.
A voice-messaging system allows a caller to leave a spoken message in a
"voice mail box" that can then be reached via phone call and manipulated in
a number of ways: It can be duplicated, forwarded, or returned with a response
to others within the system.
A voice-response system allows a caller to perform an actual transaction
over the phone by providing a lwhich responds with
data that is spoken, instead of displayed on a screen. For example, a
caller might be able to punch a number of a replacement part into the phone
and be told if it is in stock; or he might be able to get his bank account
balance, or get a stock quotation.
All of this technology is availiable now. Analysts predict that call
processing will be a multibillion-dollar business early in the 1990s.
But today it is still fragmented, and growing slowly.
According to Probe Research, a Marstown, N.J., consulting firm, there
are about 4,200 voice-messaging systems in use, most of which offer an
automatic answering and routing function. Probe Research estimates industry
sales at about $270 million for 1987.
Corporate America is beginning to recognize the potential for
productivity gains and labor reductions from such systems, but that doesn't
mean they are sold on the concept.
The Museum of Science and Industry, for example, is able to handle
as many as 3,000 calls a day on 20 incoming lines, with just one human
operator and an Automated Attendant system from Schaumburg-based Dytel Corp.
"Sure, there are some people who don't like machines," said Steve Brandt,
office services manager for the museum. "But we figure that more people would
have been frustrated by listening to the phone ring forever than will be
upset by getting a computer. This way they get their information much faster."
Aware that many such systems are considered little more than digital
nags by their detractors, Sanford Morganstein, president of Dytel, likes to
explain his Automated Attendant as something more than just a recording.
"We like to describe it not as a machine, or a recording, but as a
replacement for lousy service," he said. "The idea is to handle phone calls,
not just answer the phone or take a message. That annoys people. We want to
let them be in charge of their phone call, let them choose the option they
want, let them keep trying if they feel like it, or leave a message if they
don't. We found much better acceptance when we stopped calling it a recording."
Nonetheless, there is still a certain wariness among major corporations
in turning their most valuable commodity- clients and customers - over to
an automated system that just might might irritate them so much that they go
elsewhere.
as a result, the technology seems to be sneaking in the back door.
"Right now it's used a lot for after hours, overflow and friendly
callers," said David Yedwab, senior consultant at Eastern Management Group,
a consulting firm based in Stamford, Conn. "Corporations want both worlds:
a high-tech ssolution to improve productivity and a soft-touch approach to
deal with their clients."
"We don't want to risk offending or losing our clients," empasized a
partner in a major Chicago consulting firm that has a sophisticated answering
and messaging system. The system is not hooked up to the firm's main number.
"We sort of look on it as our back door number," she said. "We give the
automatic anumber to people who have to be nice to us, like
suppliers and vendors and family members," she laughed. "Never clients."
"We would prefer that our customers speak to a human during the day,"
said Robert Gordon, a spokesman for Applied Data Research, a major software
house, which used an automated system in its Princeton, N.J., and Dallas
offices after hours and on weekends.
"We're very happy with it for non-normal business hours," he said.
"We have a 24-hour tech-support hotline, but if people forget that number
and dial the main number at our headquarters, they can get transferred over
with a two-digit code by the system."
Sears, Roebuck & Co. uses and automated system in its Schaumburg and
Oak Brook stores, but is almost defensive about it.
"It's only a backup measure for when our operators are all busy," said
spokesman Jim Podany. "We consider it for extenuating circumstances only. We
prefer human operators."
"A lot of companies are only using these systems internally for their
service personnel," admitted Eugene Mathews, technical specialist at
American Telephone & Telegraph Co., which also makes such a device.
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TITLE: A National Radio Paging System
FROM: Radio-Electronics
DATE: January 1988
You can run but you can't hide- from satellite paging
HERB FRIEDMAN, COMMUNICATIONS EDITOR
It was a dark and stormy night... somehwere back down the road Snoopy had
fallen out of the family's pickup truck, and Charlie Brown had just
discovered he was gone. Faster than Clark Kent changing into Superman,
Charlie Brown rushed to a roadside telephone booth, punched in an 800
telephone number plus a few more digits, and out in the night Snoopy heard
a small brown box on his belt go beep...beep...beep, and when he looked
down at the box he saw the telephone number of Charlie's phone booth. A
quick call and Snoopy was rescued.
Snoopy's rescue worked like this. the 800 number that Charlie called is
the free access for the Cue Paging Corp.'s (Box 7789, Newport Beach, CA
92658.) NATIONAL paging system. Cue Paging uplinked the next set of
touch-tones punched in by Charlie Brown- which represented the access
code for Snoopy's "brown box" pocket-pager and the telephone number of
Charlie's phone booth- to the Westar 4 satellite. Across the U.S., satellite
downlinks set the data signals to more than 100 FM stations, which
rebroadcast the data on a 57-kHz SCA subcarrier.
Meanwhile, the pocket-pager on Snoopy's belt, which is a scanning FM
receiver with a 12-digit LCD display, was searching for an FM station that
was broadcasting a 57-kHz SCA subcarrier modulated with Cue Paging's
attention code. (The attention code is broadcast so the receiver can
distinguish between a Cue Paging subcarrier and all others). The receiver's
tuning locked onto the FM station having the strongest Cue Paging subcarrier.
When the FM station broadcast Snoopy's access code, the receiver beeped and
displayed the data, which was the telf Charlie Brown's
phone booth. When Snoopy heard the beep, he simply looked at the receiver's
LCD display and saw Charlie's telephone number.
A lot of technology.
As you can gather from our comicstrip scenario, many high-tech
disciplines go into nationwide radio-paging. Figure 1, which is a
pictoral of the system, gives a better idea of the various technologies used.
Assuming you're the subscriber, the system works this way. Anyone who
wants to reach you- even if they have no idea whether you're around the block
or on the other continent- uses their touch-tone phone (1) to dial a toll-free
800 number that accesses Cue Pagin's computer (2) in Virginia. Depending on
where the telephone is located and the long-distance carrier used by the
800 connection, the telephone signal travels to the computer via ordinary
telephone wires, fiber optics, microwave, satellite link, or any
combination of communication paths. A digitized voice from the computer asks
the caller to input the subscriber's access code. A tone beep informs the
caller that the computer has recognized the code will accept 12 touch-tone
digits, which can represent a telephone number, or anything else (like a
secret code).
The data representing the access code and up to 12 digits is stored in
the computer for possible Voce Message Retrieval (we'll explain that later)
and sent to a Westar 4 satellite uplink (3). The Westar 4 satellite (4)
downlinks the signal to local or regional satellite receiving facilities
(5), which send the data to one or more local FM stations (6) via telephone,
radio relay, or a microwave link.
For example, because of its unusually large metropolitan area and its
"canyons" created by many tall buildings, New York City requires several
Cue Pagin SCA stations for complete coverage (right down into the subway
system). The satellite signal is received by WQXR's SRO (Satellite
Receive Only), which passes the signal along to WCBS by conventional radio
line. Another pagin station, WNYE, get's its paging data feed from a
special receiver that is tuned to the WCBS SCA.
Each FM station is equipped with automatic Cue Paging failure detection,
central monitoring station notification, and a satellite-signal bypass
via the telephone switched network (dial-up). We will cover that part of
the system later.
Six memories
Your pocket pager (7)- called an FM/SCA Cue Unit -received the message
from a participating FM station and stores it in one of its six 12-digit
memories.
The Cue Unit can be set to either beep or remain silent when it receives
new data. Either way, you can read the data in any of the six memories on an
LCD display and save or erase the data as desired. A memory without data
cannot read, therefore not time is wasted stepping through empty memories.
Since every FM station in the system receives the data at the same
time, you can receive your message anywhere as long as you're within
range of an FM station that supplies Cue Paging. Presently, all major
metropolitan areas from coast to coast are serem, as well as
some not-so-major but important industrial areas.
Coverage is not complete, however, and there are some surprising holes
in the system. For example, although we can't expect coverage in the
wide-open-spaces of Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, and Idaho, at the time
this article was prepared Cue Paging's service map showed there was no service
in Virginia (outside the D.C. area), Oklahoma, and New Mexicao. However,
Cue Paging plans to expand coverage as FM station access premits.
The individual pieces
The Cue Unit is a special 87-108-MHz scanning receiver that is
manufactured in Finland. It is powered by four 100-mAh Ni-Cd batteries that
are recharged in 12 to 16 hours by a supplied trickle-charger base. A full
battery charge can carry the reciever for about three days. The functional
block diagram of the receiver is shown in Fig. 2. (Remember, Fig. 2 is
functional for ease of understanding; it does not represent the actual
digital/microprocessor circuits.)
An internal antenna feeds the received FM signal into an RF amplifier,
then into the mixer and on to the IF amplifier. Tuning is done through a
VCO (Voltage Controlled Oscillator) that automatically sweeps the FM band.
The output of the IF amplifier feeds through to a 57-kHz SCA detector, a
digital identification decoder, a data decoder, the memory stack, and the LCD
digital display. A sampling circuit from the SCA detector's output senses
the attention signal of a Cue Paging SCA and locks the VCO on frequency.
Assorted trigger circuits sound an internal beeper when data is received,
the battery is low, or the SCA signal fails (due to low or no SCA signal
strength).
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NOTA:
This is not the entire article but you get the picture of how the national
beeping system works.
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