Telephone Services team keeps lines of communication open

Ever wonder what keeps UD running smoothly? Up Close & Personnel profiles the employees who keep UD ticking around the clock throughout the year. This week, the focus is on Telephone Services.

Lynne Newlin and Christine Vitale

3:22 p.m., June 1, 2005--Ever since their invention in 1876, telephones have been keeping people connected. Several times a day, in any number of situations, they’re used to conduct business, get in touch with loved ones, make emergency contacts and order pizza. If a survey were conducted, phones--particularly in today’s cell phone culture--would probably outrank even direct human contact as the preferred communication tool.

The seven staff members of Telephone Services in Information Technologies are the people working behind the wires and bells. They are responsible for duties that include answering and routing more than 140 calls a day, balancing the University’s phone budget, tracking long-distance calls, keeping statistics and maintaining the more than 83,421 voice-mail boxes at UD (as well as the hardware and software connected with them).

“One thing I’ve learned through all my years here that I find very interesting is how personally people take the phone lines on their desks,” manager Lynne W. Newlin said. “When a desk phone stops working, it becomes a very personal issue; users can’t understand how it could have happened.

“When a signal cuts out on a cell phone, it doesn’t affect people the same way as when a signal cuts out on a landline,” she said. “As a society, we’ve become very accustomed to their reliability.”

Although many think of Telephone Services primarily as a campus directory service, Newlin said the job she and her six colleagues handle entails many diverse tasks. Besides providing a campus directory service to callers from the University community and beyond, the staff at Telephone Services takes care of all phone-related hardware and software maintenance issues, billing and data tracking, vendor interactions and voice mailbox updates. And this complex infrastructure, Newlin said, requires not only good teamwork but also good organizational and juggling skills.

“We do a lot of multi-tasking,” she said. “We all take a piece of the pie and overlap to some degree. It definitely takes a well-rounded person to work in our office, because to thrive here, you have to be more than strictly a budget person or strictly a people person.

“The diversity of what we handle is what keeps the work interesting,” Newlin said.

Not surprisingly, good communication skills and staying informed are essential for job success in Telephone Services.

“Everyone here thoroughly reads UDaily, The Review and other campus publications,” Newlin said, “so we’re very aware of what’s going on, and this especially helps the operators who handle calls to UD’s 831-2000 general number keep current so they can answer the approximately 140 calls fielded a day.”

Anna Brown and Regina Keefer, part-time telephone operators in the office, typically field the calls (approximately one and a half calls every minute) during their alternating weekday shifts. They agree that staying involved with campus life is critical, particularly at graduation and fall semester registration, when the number of incoming calls spikes.

“I’ve never really had a problem routing a call,” Brown said, “but I think that’s partly because of research and knowledge of UD. Almost everything anyone asks for is available somewhere on campus.”
Occasional calls come from nervous parents trying to track down their students and from panicked gardeners wanting to report strange insects or to ask about plants.

Pam Flockerzi

“Sometimes, a caller will feel it’s a crisis situation with bees, bugs and acts of nature,” Newlin said, “but Anna always knows where to send them. After awhile, if you’ve been on the job long enough, you get to know everything there is to know about every expert in every department on campus.”

Voice mail coordinator Pam Flockerzi, who credits her technical savvy to her posting in the IT machine room 14 years ago, maintains campus voice-mail boxes for all students, staff and faculty on campus.

A working knowledge of basic phone hardware and software comes with the territory, she said. “My on-the-job training and many years of computer experience have helped, but everyone here has to understand some technical aspects,” she said.

“I enjoy working with the users, keeping everyone’s mail box maintained, but I also enjoy the technical end as well. The system is a real workhorse and doesn’t need a lot of maintenance.”

Billing, records and data tracking are overseen by Christine Vitale, senior administrative assistant, who also plays a major role in UD’s upkeep of phones.

“Telephone Services is a very service-oriented operation,” she said, “and because the University is such a dynamic environment where everyone works together, the job is never dull and involves a lot of office interaction.”

Blaze Dougherty, records analyst/coordinator, who assists Vitale in all billing and record-keeping capacities, agrees. “It’s a nice feeling to come to work every day and be part of a team where you know you’re helping and making a difference,” she said.

Patricia Shaver, who has been a service coordinator for four years and an operator for two and a half years, also believes that collegiality plays a large role in keeping the work enjoyable. “We work with a lot of nice people here, and because everyone has such a good grasp on his or her job, I always know I can go to someone with a question,” she said.

Newlin agreed. “You can always find answers here,” she said, “and there’s a challenging question every day.

“Telephones might seem pretty boring, but someone’s got to manage them, and this makes all of us here in Telephone Services stay on our toes every day of the week,” she said.

Article by Becca Hutchinson
Photos by Kathy F. Atkinson

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