Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 6, 1990                   TAG: 9006060225
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ROB HIAASEN COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TOUCH-TONING OFTEN ONLY WAY TO REACH OUT

Then there's the guy - and this is no joke - who calls the courthouse. He is told to dial 1-3-5 to hear a recording about simplified dissolutions of marriage. Touch-tone divorces.

Welcome to Voice Mail, Call Answer, Voice Response Unit, Audix, MemoryCall, telephone mailboxes. Whatever the trademark or feature, these answering services are spreading like PCs. Some say the recording services provide cheap and efficient communication; others say they provide aggravating ex-communication.

Regardless, we have to answer to them because banks, hospitals, insurance companies, credit unions, courthouses, gynecologists, newspapers and friends are using the services.

Still, it's maddening when you can't talk to a human or can't follow the dial directions because your fingers move more slowly than the recorded directions.

"The whole thing stinks," said Hugh Barnett, owner of A Able Answering Service. "You get some jerk on the phone, it's not even a person. Before you can think, you're told to dial 2.

"You finally say to hell with it."

Still, there are signs that more people are willing to let their fingers do the talking.

Statewide calls to Barnett Bank's electronic bankers have increased 200 percent, spokesman Glenn Johnson said.

Barnett Bank uses voice mail, where you can leave messages in someone's telephone "mailbox." The service has substantially cut memo-writing and secretarial positions, Johnson said. Also, the company uses "call answer," in which the phone doubles as an answering machine.

If nothing else, he said, this technology might kill the buzzard of buzz words from the '80s.

"We don't need the interface anymore," Johnson said.