Switchboard operator
A Customer Service Representative ( or telephone operator) is an employee in telephony, whose job it is to accept telephone calls and to convey it to the desired participant.
History
In previous attendants had yet to be taught manually (some with the hand crank ) what (hence " by the exchange " or " Demoiselle " ) took place in their own offices mostly by female telephone operators, because the high register was more understandable than that of most men. Today, the direct election of telephone numbers almost everywhere (dialup connection ), so that a manual switchboard no longer necessary ( and usually not possible) is. For larger companies telephone operators are used for the correct assignment of calls. Modern telephone systems support the display of the free and busy extensions ( " switchboard " ) by pilot lights or on a PC; increasingly take on the task of spoken dialog systems telephone operators.
In emergency call centers and other control centers, the telephone operators are also called dispatchers.
A still task performed by operators is to accept messages from a caller and submitting them in text form, for example in a paging network as pager. Also telephone operators were used for recording of telegrams.
The young lady by the Office in Germany
Women displaced from 1889 men in the telephone service. The main reason was the higher vocal range, which could be understood on the phone then transmitted frequencies better than that of men in the exchanges. Their task was to give a subscriber to another subscriber. Each participant had a dedicated jack on the switchboard. The standard phrase was " Now comes a call for you " and the connection to the interlocutor was prepared.
For this job, a good education, excellent manners and, if possible, foreign language skills were required. For recording only some recruitment tests were carried out. The ladies had young, be unmarried and of good family. The training or learning curve funded the post. The content was similar such as the secretary. It was enough to feed an unmarried woman.
Around the turn of the century enjoyed great popularity of this profession. Nearly 4000 by the exchange, there was 1897. Ten years later there were already 16,000. With the development of automatic switching equipment, built the compounds in the electromechanical voters who " Miss " were gradually replaced by machines: 1908, the first automatic local office in Germany was put into operation in Hildesheim. But only in 1966 were all local networks automatically in the field of the old Federal Republic. Also the discussions of mobile telephony in the A- mains were built on hand placement. To date, there are operator assisted calls abroad, as not all devices can be selected directly in all countries. The Telekom operates for this purpose even a phone number where you can be immediate convey.
- Hand placement over the years
Telephone exchange in 1902
France, news assistants of brokerage desk / telephone system (1944 )
Steckfeld a telephone, 1975