Joint venture centrex serves school, state offices

Communications News, June, 1991 by Ruth A. Michalecki

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is a major university with an enrollment of approximately 25,000 students.

We are a research institution and offer undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees in a wide range of disciplines. Our resident student population is about 9500.

Our telecommunications switch is Northern Telecom DMS-100 Meridian Centrex and our local telephone company is the Lincoln Telephone Co., an independent telco serving 22 counties in southeast Nebraska.

The relationship between the Lincoln Telephone Co. and the university has been excellent over the years. We have cooperated in many joint ventures and they have been aggressive in meeting our needs with innovative ideas and long-range plans.

This relationship played a key role in developing our unique operator services function.

In October, 1987, we moved from the older AE #2EAX Centrex Switch to the DMS-100. The DMS-100 was upgraded to SuperNode status a few months ago and BCS 32 is scheduled for installation this month.

Lincoln is not only home to the university, but it is the state capital as well. Having state government offices located in the same city as a major university made it easier for the state and university to accomplish a joint venture serving the telecomm needs of both.

For about 15 years, the university telecomm office has handled telephone operator services for state government offices as well as for the university. And 10 years ago, we added the city and county government offices to our system.

The ability to provide operator services to state, city, and county government offices and university faculty, staff, and students is due to several things.

First and most important, the majority of the offices we serve are within a few miles of each other. Second, all the offices are centrex customers served by Lincoln Telephone (LT&T) off the DMS-100 switch.

The DMS-100 is capable of providing distinct and individual customer groups such as state government offices and the university, yet still permits the groups to use a common operator source.

Calls enter the operator console carrying the identification of the customer so the operators can answer the caller with the correct greeting. Various state or city employees dialing 0 for operator assistance are identified on the console and the operator can answer accordingly.

The operators are university employees and the operator consoles are located on the campus. However, few, if any, callers to state or city/county offices are aware the operators actually are at the university.

Operators frequently are asked directions to various agencies and services by callers using courtesy phones inside the state or city office buildings. Due to a unique and efficient directory information system, they can provide the directions just as if they are located in the same building as the caller.

Prior to combining the operator services function, state government operators worked from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and hours for city/county operators were the same.

Emergency after-hours services for city/county and state callers were available through commercial telephone answering services. The university operator services are provided 24 hours per day, seven days a week.

Combining the operator services functions benefited all agencies. The state offices had three full-time operators plus a supervisor; city/county offices had two full-time operators and a part-time supervisor. Both of these offices had problems filling the gap created by illness, vacations, etc.

In addition, their operators lacked training and dedicated supervision, and their information database was manual and often outdated.

The University had five full-time operators plus student employees and a chief operator on duty all the time. Operators were provided on-going training and supervision, and their database was fully automated, with updates entered daily.

We believe we provide the caller to state or city/county offices with superior operator services as a result of the merger.

The state and city/couty reimburse the university for their share of the operators' salaries and benefits. It takes fewer operators to serve the state and city/county offices by combining the services than it did before, and they receive round-the-clock operator services.

The additional income helps the university maintain quality operator services for the university community and the spirit of cooperation has been a very positive experience for all concerned.

The university operators provide executive answering services and after-hours emergency to all customers groups. They also schedule and put-up teleconference calls; handle a large number of incoming 800 calls, routing the caller to the proper agencies or offices for assistance; provide information on government committee meetings, university activities, public hearings, or events; assist students with calls; take calls from citizens concerning all sorts of problems; and even place calls for inmates from the city jail and/or state prison.