Operator assistance refers to service provided by a telephone operator to the calling party of a telephone call. This included telephone calls made from pay phones, calls placed station-to-station, person-to-person, or collect, third-number calls, calls billed to credit cards, and certain international calls which could not be dialed directly.
Operators could also assist with diagnosing technical difficulties, verifying whether a line was busy (busy line verification, or BLV), or left off the hook, or breaking in on a live call to ask the caller to clear the line for an incoming call (busy line interruption, or BLI). The latter service was often utilized by emergency police. In addition, operators were often a first point of contact for the elderly wanting information on the current date and time.
Before the advent of emergency telephone numbers, operators identified and connected emergency calls to the correct emergency services. Directory assistance was also part of the operator's job.
In the early days of telephones all calls were connected by an operator. Later, local calls could typically be dialed directly, but long-distance and international calls had to be connected by an operator, often subject to a minimum charge, typically for three minutes. Eventually it became possible to direct-dial all calls, but operator assistance continued to be available, often at higher cost, for all calls; in the US Bell System an operator-assisted call carried a 50% premium for the first three minutes.
Operator-assisted calls were initially handled at telephone switchboards which were subsequently replaced with computer assisted systems such as Traffic Service Position System (TSPS) consoles beginning in the late 1960s, which automated many aspects of call setup while still requiring operator involvement for billing verification, announcements, and customer interaction.
Connection Station-to-station
A station-to-station call, also known as station paid or station collect depending on the billing arrangement, was an operator-assisted call in which the calling party (CLG) agreed to talk to whoever answered the telephone. Timing and billing began as soon as the call was answered, regardless of who picked up.
Person-to-person A person-to-person call, also known as person paid or person collect depending on the billing arrangement, was a higher priced operator-assisted call in which the calling party required to speak to a specific named party and not simply to anyone who answered. The caller was only charged for the call from the moment the requested party was reached, and was not charged at all if the party was unreachable.
An operator would typically announce the call to the answering party with the phrase "(Called Party), please. Long Distance is calling."
Bell System operating practice set a holding interval — the maximum time an operator would wait for the called party to come to the telephone or while a collect-call acceptance was sought. This interval was originally three minutes but was reduced to one minute by 1973 to improve network efficiency; operators could wait longer if either party requested it. At the one-minute mark on a person-to-person call the prescribed phrase was: "I am sorry, I have not yet reached [called party]. Will you speak to anyone else, or shall I leave word?" On a station collect call, if no one had accepted or refused the charge after one minute, the operator was required to release the circuit, as the connection could not be held indefinitely on a station call.
Messenger call When waiting for the person would exceed the holding interval, a messenger call was used. In areas with minimal telephone service such as smaller towns (and before the ubiquity of mobile phones), a call was made to a normally staffed central location with a telephone, such as a corner store, public call office, post office, or other public business, and a messenger would be hired to go to the recipient's location to advise him or her to come to the phoned location at a designated time to receive a phone call. The calling party would be advised to call the operator back at the arranged time to complete the call.
Sequence call Prior to direct distance dialing, placing a long distance call often required an operator to take down the call information and call the customer back when ready. Looking up routing codes and preparing billing tickets often took several minutes or more depending on circuit and staff availability.
Customers requesting two or more simultaneous calls from the same telephone were offered the option of a sequence call, handled by a dedicated sequence operator. A list of numbers to be called would be shared with the operator in advance, giving the operator time to look up routing codes and prepare billing tickets for all calls at once, significantly speeding overall call completion for the customer compared to handling each request separately. The calling party would hook flash to indicate the desire to move to the next call in the list.
Emergency Before the establishment of uniform emergency telephone numbers, operators were responsible for connecting emergency calls to police, fire, ambulance, hospitals, civil defense, and military authorities. Operators were trained to advance emergency calls without delay, not stopping to ask questions unless the caller specifically requested that the operator make the report; in that case the operator obtained the calling number, location, and nature of the emergency and said "I will report it for you." On calls from coin telephones, operators did not delay an emergency call to collect a deposit; on local coin calls to police, sheriff, and fire departments, no charge was assessed at all. If the called emergency number was busy, the operator offered to interrupt the conversation. In localities where no ambulance service was available, operators were instructed to connect to the police department instead.
Inward
Inward referred to calls arriving from other operators, usually in a different geographic region.
Certain types of calls could only be completed by a local operator, for example in systems without dial service or to non-dialable points, therefore inbound long distance calls would also require the local operator for call completion. A local or inward operator was reached by using an inward route, for example, in the United States, an area code followed by 121.
Because the incoming call arrived on a trunk designated for inward traffic, the answering (or "inward") operator would recognize it as an operator-to-operator request and would assist in completing the final leg(s) of the connection, either directly, to ringdown circuits and toll stations, or to other operators in nearby smaller exchanges without long distance trunks.
Supplementary Time and charges (T&C) The time and charges for a call could be reported back to a requesting party as the duration in minutes and the completed call charge. Requested before a call began, it was sometimes used by house guests to reimburse hosts for use of their telephone, and was almost always required by hotel switchboard operators to charge room guests for calls they made.
In the Bell System, T&C could be requested by either the calling or called party. If the requesting party disconnected before the call ended, the operator prepared a memo and if neither party could be reached after initial attempts, the memo ticket was filed for follow-up.
Busy line verification Busy line verification (BLV) was a service in which an operator checked the condition of a called line at the request of a caller or distant operator who had been unable to get through. The operator accessed the line via a dedicated test trunk and reported back the condition encountered.
Bell System operating practice required operators to report the result in one of three ways depending on what they found: a busy signal, an equipment trouble condition, or an emergency. Operators were explicitly prohibited from telling a customer that a line was "off the hook", on the grounds that the actual trouble condition—which might be equipment failure rather than a handset left off-hook—could not be determined from the busy-no-tone (BNT) signal alone; the prescribed phrase was "There seems to be trouble on the line, I'll report it for you", after which the operator made out a trouble ticket. Operators were equally prohibited from disclosing to a caller that a conversation was in progress on the verified line. Adverse publicity received by Mountain Bell in late 1973 resulted from an operator who, when asked to verify a doctor's office line, volunteered "It takes me three days to reach my doctor"—a remark characterized in internal bulletins as "completely uncalled for."
Billing Calls were typically billed to the subscriber or calling party (CLG), but operators could also make arrangements to bill charges elsewhere and issue credits for errors. Beginning in the late 1960s automated services such as the Traffic Service Position System and the Automated Coin Toll System began to assist with much of this work.
Collect / Reverse Charge A collect call was any call type where the called party (CLD) was billed for the call rather than the calling party (CLG). The operator first obtained the calling party's name, and requested acceptance of charges by the called party before leaving the line. If the called party refused, the operator returned to the calling party to ask whether they would pay the charges themselves; if not, the call was canceled. Collect calls to coin phones were typically not permitted and were prevented by checking the called number against a list of coin phones in the called area.
Standard Bell System phrases used by operators included: "I have a collect call for anyone, from (calling party). Will you accept the charge?" or, when a specific party was requested, "I have a collect call for (called party), from (calling party). Will you accept the charge?"
Non-published Collect Callers could request that a collect call be marked as non-published, causing the originating telephone number to be omitted or partially masked on the billed party's statement. This protected the privacy of the calling subscriber while still allowing the charges to be billed to the called party. The feature was commonly used by professionals or individuals who wished to avoid revealing a residential telephone number, particularly when conducting business from home. In such cases, the statement would display only the city or exchange of origin, or a generic notation such as "non-published number", instead of the complete telephone number.
Auto Collect The service functioned as an early form of a toll-free telephone number, enabling businesses, transportation providers, government agencies, and customer service organizations to receive inbound calls from remote locations with no charge to the caller.History of Toll-Free Numbers, bebusinessed.com.
Special exchange (e.g. Zenith, Enterprise, WX, Freephone)
The caller requested a published or advertised number beginning with a special named exchange—such as Zenith, Enterprise, Freephone, or WX—from the telephone operator, who then looked up the destination number, completed the call, and billed the charges to the called party. The service was intended for organizations that wanted to be reachable across multiple regions without requiring local branch lines or dedicated foreign exchange circuits.
A few organizations continued to maintain auto collect numbers into the 21st century. For example, , the California Highway Patrol still published Zenith 1-2000.
Special phrase