File:Bell telephone magazine (1922) (14569533197).jpg

Identifier: belltelephonemag4344amerrich (find matches)
Title: Bell telephone magazine
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: American Telephone and Telegraph Company American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Information Dept
Subjects: Telephone
Publisher: (New York, American Telephone and Telegraph Co., etc.)
Contributing Library: Prelinger Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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from improvements in instrumentalitieswhich he uses. The current sophistication of the Amer-ican public makes them take technicaladvances for granted—almost as theirright—and greet some of the greatestbreakthroughs of the scientific world witha yawn. For instance, electronic switch-ing. It is a tremendous advance, but manyof the electronic switching features whichcan now be made available in mechanizedsystems, will be absorbed by the custom-ers as inevitable progress to which theywill not give a moments thought. The factthat customers take their service forgranted is our greatest accomplishment.But it creates a problem in that theirawareness of its quality is often only re-alized when perfection is not experienced. Transmission improvements—some ofthe greatest accomplishments that weveever made—after a point are impercepti-ble to the customer. There was a daywhen people literally yelled to be heardover long distance circuits. Today normalconversational levels are adequate. Our
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future efforts to eliminate noise and im-prove quality for exact reproduction ofthe talkers voice, while requiring greateffort and technological progress, can beexpected to produce little acclaim from our customers who already expect per-fection. Since people do expect perfectionin the mechanical aspects of our job, Ibelieve that the greatest future oppor-tunities for making the customer aware of SOME REFLECTIONS ONCOMPUTERS & HISTORY service improvement lie in the personalcontact area. ™ For instance, no amount ot mechan-ical perfection in the daily what-the-customer-expects areas of the servicewill ever replace the warmth of repairinga telephone on a stormy night, at a vaca-tion house. I know an economics professorwho remembers just such an incident andit happened 25 years ago! Customersdont forget a perseverant operator in afamily emergency, the straightening outof a complicated billing arrangement, orthe skillful handling of a difficult informa-tion request. These are the ar

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