Directory Aid : She’s a ‘Natural’ Pacific Bell Voice

Hello Teri-Ann, goodby Ramona. Pacific Bell, after a year-long search for a “more natural voice” for its automated directory assistance system, has started using Teri-Ann Sax of Rochester, N.Y., for the job.

Callers hear Sax after they ask a Pacific Bell operator for a phone number. Her recorded voice comes on and says, “Thank you for calling,” and then provides the requested number twice.

She is replacing Ramona Alpern, who customers complained sounded too mechanical and unfriendly, the company said.

Sax may soon be the mostly widely heard person in California. Pacific Bell, California’s largest phone company, receives 3 million directory assistance calls daily, 1.54 million in Southern California alone.

“If I were paid every time my voice was heard I would be in the south of France,” Sax said in a telephone interview from Rochester. Sax, 39, is not new to the telephone business. Her voice responds to directory assistance inquiries in more than 30 states, and she worked her way through college as an operator for New York Bell. Pacific Bell picked Sax on the basis of a survey of 1,000 Pac Bell operators who judged her voice best in terms of pace, clarity, quality and friendliness.

To make her tapes, Sax was recorded saying each digit in each of the seven positions in a telephone number. The recordings were wrapped up in two sessions lasting less than an hour each.

Despite her widespread exposure, Sax says people don’t recognize her voice. “I have been surveyed twice by my local telephone company about how I like the directory assistance recording,” which she does. “Needless to say I gave it a glowing report. She (the survey taker) didn’t recognize my sound at all.”