Pacific Bell Expands Its Bilingual Services : Telecommunications: A center to handle requests of Spanish-speaking businesses opens today. Other programs for Korean, Cantonese, Mandarin and Vietnamese clients are already in operation.

In one of the most extensive efforts to offer bilingual business services anywhere in the nation, Pacific Bell today will unveil a bilingual center to handle requests of Spanish-speaking business executives throughout California.

Pacific Bell hopes to ring up more sales of service and equipment in California’s fast-growing Latino business community by establishing the Hispanic Business Center in City of Commerce.

Pacific Bell executives are scheduled to announce the new toll-free service at a press conference today. The company also said it has expanded statewide its Korean bilingual services for residential customers, adding to recently expanded residential services for speakers of Cantonese and Mandarin.

The Hispanic Business Center’s 11 bilingual staff members will answer billing questions and help business customers place orders for new service and add or change telephone features. The center’s staff will also help Spanish speakers identify their company’s needs for telecommunication services such as WATS lines and toll-free numbers.

By establishing the center, Pacific Bell is acknowledging the growing financial clout of the state’s estimated 115,000 Latino-owned businesses, said Maury Rosas, director of the utility’s Latino and Asian-American marketing programs. Rosas, in an interview Wednesday, said managers of many of those companies prefer to speak Spanish.

“There is a significant market comprised of those who do not wish to speak English,” Rosas said. “There are rapidly changing demographics in this state. . . . We’re making it easier for customers to contact us.”

The program is the latest in a series of bilingual services offered by Pacific Bell. Responding to an order from the state’s Public Utilities Commission, Pacific Bell started down the road of linguistic diversity in 1968 by providing Spanish-speaking operators for people needing emergency assistance.

The company took a second step in 1986 when it established directory assistance and telephone repair services in Spanish. It moved further in 1987 when it established the Hispanic Residence Office, in which bilingual staffers in four separate offices help Spanish-speaking residential customers with orders and billing questions. That program handles about 6,000 calls per day, said Kathleen Flynn, a Pacific Bell spokeswoman.

Since establishing the Spanish service for residential customers, Pacific Bell has established similar statewide programs for speakers of Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean and Vietnamese.

The Korean service, first established in Southern California communities in 1988, was expanded into a statewide program this week. The services in Cantonese and Mandarin, established in the San Francisco Bay Area in June, were expanded statewide in October. The Vietnamese service, piloted in Orange and Riverside counties in 1988, was extended to the rest of the state in July.

“We’re trying to meet a growing need,” Flynn said. “By the year 2000, 48% of Californians will be ethnic minorities.”

Flynn said the latest service will not create additional costs for Pacific Bell because the company has trained people already on the payroll for positions at the Hispanic Business Center.

Some Latino business leaders also said they expect Pacific Bell to generate revenue through the new service. An undetermined but significant portion of California’s Latino business community prefers to speak Spanish, said Lillian Aguilar, president of the Los Angeles-based Latin Business Assn., a statewide organization with about 600 business members.

“They (Pacific Bell) are responding to a need,” she said. “This will help Hispanic business people develop their operations.”

Another Latino group--the San Francisco-based Latino Issues Forum, an organization representing civil rights groups, lawyers and professors--said the Latino business center was overdue but welcome.

Said John Gamboa, executive director of the Forum: “They (Pacific Bell) have to meet the needs of a changing market.”