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Dealing with a just a couple of telemarketing phone calls can be a nuisance to many people. It's tough to imagine, then, what it would be like to handle 10,000 calls in a single evening.
That can--and has--happened at Anserphone, which handles phone-answering chores for all the area's cable TV systems when service is interrupted, such as during a power outage, from its 8,000-square-foot offices in Niles.
Bill Hunter, president of Anserphone, says calls might be transferred to automated voice-mail messages that inform callers the problem is being fixed. "The message also tells them to stay on the line and get a real person if there's an emergency," he notes.
It is that "real person," Hunter emphasizes, who's at the heart of Anserphone's success--1996 is the company's 50th year--despite all the technological advances that continue to change the telephone industry. "We still rely very heavily on the plain, old-fashioned operator answering, 'How may I help you?'" he says. "Automation hasn't replaced that, and it will be a long time before it does."
Still, Hunter is hedging his bets; he also owns American Voice Mail, which makes sophisticated automated voice-mail systems at a plant in Ivyland, a Philadelphia suburb, and headquartered in Niles. "In the eight years we've been shipping, we have placed just under 600 systems nationwide --it's not an inexpensive system," he says.
Hunter is also continuing to pioneer technology in which development he has played an instrumental part. "We introduced the first pagers and car phones to the area, and I carried the first portable telephone into Ohio, which was a forerunner of cellular," Hunter recalls, adding he sold the radio phone business some years ago.