Hello! This is Voice Mail Speaking

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt

One day last month Linda Hiwot, a Brooklyn junior high school teacher, got a surprise when she phoned her bank for a credit-card balance. Instead of the familiar human teller, she was answered by a computer-generated voice that told all callers with Touch-Tone phones to "press 1 now," thus beginning a series of steps that would eventually lead to her balance. When she called the IRS about an overdue tax check, another computer voice directed her to "push 9" for refunds. Even a local department store had acquired a robot operator, which like an overeager clerk insisted on taking Hiwot on a guided tour of the entire store ("For furniture, home decorating or major appliances, push 3"). Desperate for human contact, she finally dialed a friend, only to be invited to leave a message at the sound of the tone. "It was like the Twilight Zone," says Hiwot. "I felt there was nobody out there but machines."

It is a feeling Hiwot, and everybody else, had better get used to. The U.S., and much of the world, is in the midst of a sweeping technological conversion, replacing human secretaries and operators with a new kind of high-tech wizardry known variously as automated answering systems, voice-messaging units or, most simply, voice mail. In the past six years, tens of thousands of voice-messaging systems have been installed in stores, offices and government agencies. The units answer phones, route callers and dispense information ranging from baseball scores and movie reviews to weather reports and horoscopes. Even the Vatican has a voice-mail system, allowing devout callers to hear messages recorded by the Pope.

The technological forerunner of the modern voice-messaging system was the common telephone-answering machine. But now, instead of talking to a simple tape recorder, people are conversing with a computer at the end of the line. At the heart of the new systems are special-purpose computer chips and software that convert human speech into bits of digital code. These digitized voices can then be stored on magnetic disks and retrieved in a flash, just like any other piece of computer data.

The simplest systems do just what the old answering machines do: pick up the phone, play a prerecorded greeting and record whatever the caller has to say. Some add technological bells and whistles, like push-button controls that let their owners save messages or dispatch replies -- to one person or to hundreds of people. Other systems are set up to dispense information, offering callers a menu of choices and playing the messages they select. The most powerful machines combine voice-message units with huge computer files, which enable callers to use their telephones to navigate through long lists of stock quotes or catalog items. Some units even allow a caller to order merchandise and charge it to a credit card, without ever speaking to a human.

Enthusiasts insist that the systems not only improve productivity but actually enhance human interactions by eliminating wasted calls and unproductive rounds of "telephone tag." Conventional office phone calls are surprisingly inefficient, according to studies performed by Travelers before the Hartford-based insurance company switched to voice mail. Gus Bender, a vice president for data processing, reports that three out of four calls do not reach the desired party or yield the information needed, and that when written messages are taken, nine out of ten contain at least one error. Now, using an extensive voice-mail system, 12,000 field and office workers cut through the chitchat, communicating cleanly and efficiently through digitally stored messages, some 31,000 a day. Says Bender: "It's the most important piece of office automation we've installed since the paper copier."

Voice-message systems seem to be everywhere, dispensing everything from medical services ("If you have a medical emergency, press 1") to dial-a-porn ("Press 4 for something kinky"). Curtis Hatcher of Greenwood, Fla., uses his voice-mail system to run a hot line for peanut farmers. In St. Petersburg, the Pinellas County sheriff's department uses one to communicate with informants. The new telephone companies have spawned a whole genre of for- profit voice-mail services like Touch-Tone Baseball, a popular game that allows callers to answer trivia questions like "How many bases did Ty Cobb steal in his rookie year?" (Answer: two.)

Not everyone is enamored of voice mail, however. Households with rotary phones, for example, cannot use the systems without upgrading to Touch-Tone and paying a monthly surcharge. Many people complain that the stored messages tend to be long-winded and awkwardly organized, forcing callers to field long series of multipart questions just to get a simple answer. Others find that the calls they place to automated message systems are less likely to be returned than messages left with human secretaries.

And because these devices are basically complex computer systems, they invite the kinds of problems that have become endemic to the electronic age. For example, there are voice-mail hackers who use personal computers to infiltrate commercial message systems. In one case, interlopers succeeded in replacing a Chicago-area company's greeting message with off-color wisecracks. And anyone who has ever wrestled with a modern office phone can sympathize with the California man who pressed the wrong button and sent a private love message to the entire department.

With reporting by Thomas McCarroll/New York