NYNEX MAX: A Telephone Trouble Screening Expert

No one likes to wait long when the telephone is out of order. Maintaining customer telephones is a significant problem for telephone operating companies because delays in fixing troubles mean dissatisfied customers. Moreover, the high costs of maintenance adversely affect the profits of the telephone companies. Within NYNEX (a regional Bell operating company and the parent company of New York Telephone and New England Telephone), improving the maintenance process is a strategic priority. The problem of diagnosing and fixing customer-reported telephone troubles has been made more difficult in recent years by the proliferation of new kinds of customer premise equipment, such as answering machines and cheap telephones , nonstandard equipment that was not anticipated by the diagnostic systems designed during the predivestiture days of the Bell System. The goals of improved maintenance are: a shorter time to diagnose and fix a trouble; fewer handoffs from one person to another when analyzing and repairing the trouble; a reduction in repeat complaints— complaints that resurface after the trouble was cleared; a reduction in