'But Wait, You Promised ...'

Some Good News: What's the 411?

My favorite example of new-economy meltdown is directory assistance. Directory assistance should be the perfect new-economy product: It's just information -- and simple information at that. There is an existing way to bill customers, and, given the swift accumulation of databases, directory assistance should be getting better and better all the time.

"It's gotten so much worse," says customer-service expert Patricia Seybold. "Now you get the wrong number all the time."

I've kept track during the past two months. Over several dozen calls, directory assistance delivered the wrong number about half of the time. Of course, you get charged for the wrong numbers, just as you do for the right numbers. If it's a long-distance number and it's wrong, you pay for that phone call too. As if that weren't enough, here's a moment of customer delight: Call directory assistance and try to get a credit for a wrong number.

"I'm sorry, sir," says the abrupt operator. "We don't give credits."

"I beg your pardon?"

"We don't give credits, sir. You have to call your local phone company. When your phone bill comes."

"At the end of the month?"

"Correct, sir. Is there a number you need?"

So now I've paid once for the wrong number and paid again to be told that I have to call some other company, some other time, to get my $2 back.

Yet one company gives delightful directory assistance -- polite, accurate, helpful. It is none other than ... Sprint PCS. The contrast between cellular directory and land-line directory is as dramatic as the contrast between Sprint PCS directory and Sprint PCS customer care. Ask Sprint PCS for a restaurant's number, and they offer to make a reservation. Ask for the number of a movie theater, and they offer to read you not just the number but also the movies that are playing at that theater, when they are playing, and who is starring in each movie.

Seybold was able to guess exactly what was going on immediately. "It's outsourced," she said.

And so it is. Metro One Telecommunications, a small company based in Beaverton, Oregon, handles directory assistance for Sprint PCS -- and also for Nextel and many regional cellular companies. The quality of Metro One's service is no accident. As Seybold predicted, that is exactly what it is selling to cellular companies: good directory assistance.

The economics are great for everyone: Even at what feels like an unhurried pace, Metro One's operators take 50 calls an hour (including breaks, slow periods, and training), which brings in $50 an hour. Half of that goes to Metro One, half is gravy to Sprint PCS. Of the $25 an hour that Metro One gets, operators start at some centers at $9 an hour in straight salary -- before incentive pay or benefits. Me, as a customer? I get the right number, for about what BellSouth's wrong numbers cost me.

Metro One has 29 deliberately small call centers: 200 operators or fewer, with 100 or fewer working at any one time. The call center in Charlotte, North Carolina is lean -- spartan compared to Sprint PCS's Fort Worth center. But you can understand the entire place in a single glance. Directory assistance, of course, is child's play compared to helping people with their cell-phones. But remember: Standard directory assistance is abysmal.

Heather McCuen, 23, started at Metro One in March 1999, and after nine months, she makes $12 an hour. Calls cascade in on her like a waterfall. "Leith Mercedes." "Larry's Plant Farm." "Start-to-Finish Tattoo Shop." "Just What the Doctor Ordered Restaurant."

"I'm amazed at what people name their businesses," Heather says.

In 11 minutes, she takes 17 calls -- 38.8 seconds a call. Heather's style is efficient but deliberate. She reads the number slowly to avoid having to repeat it.

What is striking is how little it takes to make people happy, how little it takes to get it right, and how long 40 seconds really is. But what is also striking is how hard it would be to automate this process. To do it right doesn't require much, but it does require a spark of human intelligence on both ends of the transaction.

Even in these brief encounters, the full range of human character is on display. "I'm looking for Shannon Pickering," says a man over a characteristically crackly connection. The Charlotte center serves mainly North Carolina and South Carolina, so the operators are familiar with local geography, but Heather and her colleagues can provide numbers nationwide. Heather patiently searches a couple of the towns that the man mentions, without luck.

"I found someone's day planner in the middle of the road," the man says. "I'm just trying to return it to her." Heather ups her intensity a notch. She broadens her search to all of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. She tries a variety of spellings for the names. Heather tells the man what she is trying. She is regretful. The man is regretful. The call spills past two minutes. No luck.