Pac Bell Offers Vietnamese Service : Bilingual Agents Will Handle Hookup, Billing Requests

Pacific Bell on Wednesday unveiled its latest bilingual service, a Vietnamese center to help customers get service for what is arguably the most important appliance in any household--the telephone.

In a move that’s one part humanitarian and one part aggressive marketing, the company will reach out and touch the more than 100,000 Vietnamese refugees living in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

By 1990, the company plans to increase its service to the nearly 300,000 Vietnamese speakers statewide. San Diego County will come on line in February, and Los Angeles County will have Vietnamese service by June.

Since the break-up of the Bell phone system five years ago, “the telecommunications industry has been incredibly competitive,” said Linda Bonniksen, a Pacific Bell spokeswoman. “The company that gets the customers keeps the customers.”

Mai Cong, president of the Vietnamese Community of Orange County, views bilingual service in a more elemental fashion: “Especially here, people who cannot speak English are so isolated.”

Pacific Bell spent four months training eight employees proficient in English and Vietnamese to handle the phones at the Tustin service center and lead Vietnamese-speaking customers through the mysteries of modern telephone service. The Vietnamese service center can be reached via a toll-free number that Pacific Bell is circulating through a variety of Vietnamese community service centers.

Sanh Tang is one member of the new bilingual team. He found out the intricacies of survival in the United States firsthand when he fled Vietnam with his family in 1978 and arrived in Salt Lake City.

“We had to find a translator all the time,” said Tang, who spoke no English on arrival. “It was really a problem when you had to go to the doctor, go to the dentist, hook up a phone. It was tough, and no one volunteered to do it for you.”

The California Public Utilities Commission gave telephone companies a multilingual nudge about four years ago, with a recommendation that the firms evaluate language services. An earlier PUC mandate required only that “0” operator service be available in Spanish throughout the state, and in Cantonese in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In 1987, GTE California opened a language assistance center in Mar Vista that serves Spanish-speaking customers in 330 communities, mostly in Southern California. Pacific Bell has had three Spanish-language service centers since 1986, in San Gabriel, San Jose and San Diego.

Last June, the company opened a similar service center in San Bruno to serve customers who speak Mandarin and Cantonese, as well as a Korean Service Center in Los Angeles.

For now, however, most of the Asian-language service is limited to billing inquiries and requests for new hookups, phone transfers and disconnections.

For directory assistance and repair calls, Pacific Bell still has no Vietnamese or Korean translation service. The “0” operator service is scheduled to expand to Vietnamese and Korean languages in 1990.

“Telephone service isn’t a luxury,” said Reed L. Royalty, Pacific Bell area vice president. “It’s a lifeline to 911, hospitals, schools, employment centers and family. Our bilingual employees will help Vietnamese customers make those vital connections.”