Listen to customer requests, referring to alphabetical or geographical directories to answer questions and provide telephone information.

“Listen to customer requests, referring to alphabetical or geographical directories to answer questions and provide telephone information.” is a core task performed by Telephone Operators. Among the occupation's 16 rated tasks, workers place it 13th by importance (#4 most important). About 82% of workers say it is relevant to their job.

This is a single occupation-specific task statement from O*NET. The figures below describe how central the task is to the job and what independent studies measure about AI and this kind of work — not a prediction that the task will be automated.

Work activities this task rolls up to

O*NET groups concrete tasks into broader work activities shared across many occupations.

• Gather information from physical or electronic sources. in Getting Information
• Provide information to guests, clients, or customers. in Communicating with People Outside the Organization

AI exposure

The OpenAI / Eloundou “GPTs are GPTs” study rates this task E1. Direct exposure — a language model could plausibly cut the time to do this task by at least half.

Exposure measures whether a model could meaningfully speed the task up — it is an estimate of overlap with model capabilities, not a measure of whether the work will be done by software. The study's intermediate score (β) for this task is 1.00. Automation potential label: T4.

Other tasks in this occupation

• Observe signal lights on switchboards, and dial or press buttons to make connections. · importance 4.6
• Operate paging systems or other systems of bells or buzzers to notify recipients of incoming calls. · importance 4.5
• Operate telephone switchboards and systems to advance and complete connections, including those for local, long distance, pay telephone, mobile, person-to-person, and emergency calls. · importance 4.5
• Monitor automated systems for placing collect calls and intervene for a callers needing assistance. · importance 4.2
• Suggest and check alternate spellings, locations, or listing formats to customers lacking details or complete information. · importance 4.1
• Update directory information. · importance 4.1
• Perform clerical duties such as typing, proofreading, and sorting mail. · importance 4.0
• Offer special assistance to persons such as those who are unable to dial or who are in emergency situations. · importance 4.0
• Interrupt busy lines if an emergency warrants. · importance 3.9
• Provide assistance for customers with special billing requests. · importance 3.9
• Provide relay service for hearing-impaired users. · importance 3.8
• Keep records of calls placed and received, and of related toll charges. · importance 3.8
• Promote company products, services, and savings plans when appropriate. · importance 3.6
• Calculate and quote charges for services such as long-distance connections.

See all tasks on the Telephone Operators page.

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

• O*NET 30.3 U.S. Department of Labor / National Center for O*NET Development
• “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130 OpenAI / academic

Data compiled June 2, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

@misc{singulariki-task-13243,
  title  = {Listen to customer requests, referring to alphabetical or geographical directories to answer questions and provide telephone information.},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/tasks/task-13243}
}