A call center is an office used for the purpose of making and receiving a large volume of telephone calls, many of which in the UK have been transfered overseas to places like India.
A call centre is operated by for example a company like Visa and other credit card companies to administer incoming product support or to recieve information inquiries from their customers. Many of the large companies use call centres, including telephone companies themselves. For example, companies like Tiscali have moved this srvice over to India.
Outgoing calls from these centres are made for the purpose of telemarketing, debt collection and other services to their customers. A call centre is often operated through an open workspace where each operator will have a telephone headset and at the work stations they will have a computer for each agent. The telephone headset is connected to a telecom switch to make connections to telephone lines easier. You may have received one of those marketing calls when the line goes dead, this is where the computer has automatically dialed out, but there is no phone operator to take the call when the line connects to you.
Most of the UK’s major businesses use call centres to interact with their customers and examples include utility companies, mail order catalogue firms, and customer support for computer hardware and software. Some businesses even service internal functions through call centres. Examples of this include help desks and sales support.
