411, How Can I Help You?

I am an avid NPR listener. This week on the The Takeaway my childhood came roaring back as they were talking about AT&T shutting down its 411 service for land line phones this month. For those that don’t know, 411 was a free public service that you used when you had a question. You would dial 411. Who remembers that?Dial 411 and you would get a person, a real person, on the other end who would answer your question about phone numbers, addresses, business hours, or sometimes something not related to directory assistance like where to find things in your town!

AT&T like the other phone companies had their own operators who would take the calls which turns out was a hugely expensive free public service. Anyone could call and ask for information and there were no limits to the number of times one could call. Some companies logged up to a million calls a day! Well into the 20th century, AT&T offered weather, bus schedules, sports scores, time and date, election results and other information requests still answered by humans. By the 1970s they were trying to figure out ways to get people not to use directory assistance, and finally, the advance of technology like the internet and smartphones, the deregulation of the telecomms industry in the 1980s, and other factors began reducing the use of the service and the number of human operators. But, in 2021, there were still around 4,000 telephone operators, down from a peak of around 420,000 in the 1970s, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

While I bet most people don’t call directory assistance today, that fact that the 411 service still existed floored me! It made me think of how rare it is to get a human when you make a phone call today. But it also made me think of why the service lasted so long.

The Takeaway discussion touched upon people who not able or adept at navigating the internet or with cognitive or physical disabilities to find their answers who still rely on the 411 service. It might be a relatively small number of people, but they are still people who need specialized services.

There are very few calls made today where you don’t reach an IVR, a chat bot, or a virtual agent. We have "Hey, Siri," or, "Hey, Alexa," and various AI and machine learning tools we can use to do exactly what 411 did for so many years to answer questions. We have call centers that have moved on from calls to IVRs, chatbots, avatars and tools to answer calls. We know of insurers who have eliminated their IVR all together and use a voice bot and messaging to answer the caller's question, reducing their call center to a small number of service agents. The cost benefits are great, but how far do we go? Is all human contact reduced?

Some new technology firms are thinking about this and ensuring that the AI and ML technologies make customer service calls more accessible—and more bearable—for everyone. This includes reducing the bias that may exist in some bots, ensuring that all customers are treated equally with “exactly the same service” which requires diversity in training the language model. While it means spending more time up front customizing the conversation, it ensures accessibility in accommodating disabilities and technical literacy, particularly for senior citizens.

As 411 goes away for good, and call centers move further and further into automation, I am hopeful that there are technology companies ensuring that no one is left behind.