If Someone Saying ‘Please’ Answers, Hang Up

If you’ve dialed 411 in California recently, you might have noticed something new in the operator’s greeting: the word hi .

In what Pacific Bell called an effort to create a consistent statewide message, the company’s 4,500 directory assistance operators have begun answering calls with their prerecorded salutation, such as “Hi, this is Mary; what city?” or “Hi, I’m Dave; what city?”

Rick Bradley, the company’s vice president of operator services, said the idea was to make the greeting “friendly, engaging and brief.” He said callers in Southern California and parts of Northern California had been put off in the past when operators greeted them with an impersonal identification number rather than a name.

The scripts, according to spokeswoman Linda Bonniksen, were developed with the help of 2,500 customers and 200 operators. The company maintained that stepped-up telephone competition makes it important that customers be able to recognize a Pacific Bell operator when they hear one.

Even so, it’s costing the company time and money. In Southern California, the average directory assistance call is now 19.35 seconds, 1.3 seconds longer than previously.

For the many operators who had incorporated “please” into their greetings--as in what city, please?-- the new phrasing means eliminating a nicety.

Punting the “P-word” caused some hand-wringing here in Pacific Bell’s headquarters city, which prides itself on being more genteel than the average burg.

Editors at the San Francisco Chronicle even wrote an editorial bemoaning the loss, calling the decision a “myopic corporate dictum.”

One 411 veteran reached in San Bruno, Calif., said she had some initial concerns about dropping the please. But she added that operators can convey good manners with their tone and attitude--and besides, now they don’t risk customers mistaking them for the “puh-lice.”