Various Directory Assistance Methods

Telecommunication has lots of surprising services to offer that truly benefit home and business users. The directory assistance is one of these remarkable telecommunication service that is being used for locating specific telephone numbers, addresses or other business or residential information.

To reduce the cost of human resources, a directory assistance system is used and it usually is comprised of a wide range of automated tools such as customized databases and softwares. One good example of this automation is a system that utilizes an IVR or virtual auto attendant, speech recognition, speech synthesis or speech recording to handle the entire call without the intervention of a live operator. These automatic operation and control allows for quicker listings and faster lookup.

But some systems still utilize an assistant operator who assists the caller. But it is an automated read-back system that finishes off the task by announcing the requested phone number to the caller. Other systems use yet another kind of method that employs both a live operator and an automated tool such as the store and forward technology. This system records the request of a caller which is then played back to the operator for quick lookup. The operator then interacts with the caller by asking specific information concerning the needed inquiry.

While both a fully automated and a live operated system have great benefits, they are sometimes limited to a single request. However, there are newer methods that allow the caller to request multiple numbers in a single directory assistance inquiry. The caller can then decide whether the retrieved information is to be put on queue, connected to all the numbers or be selected as the number to dial.

Whichever of these methods are used, the most important part is the ability to assist callers on their request for single, multiple numbers or other information.