The person who answers the phone in any organisation is just as important as the MD in that he or she provides callers with their first impression of the business. These days, armed with an arsenal of hi-tech tools, people at call centres know a great deal about the caller, even before they answer the call. Computer systems that contain details of a company's customers are hooked into phone systems used to field calls.
Many companies rely heavily on telephonic contact with customers.
A call centre allows people to phone a single location instead of being shunted around. Operators, armed with information from their computers, can answer most queries on the spot. Call centres with a facility to identify incoming calls can pop up the caller's details even before the call is answered. That way, the operator can answer the caller by name and have all their relevant details on the screen. At present, most call centres require callers to identify themselves, but once that's done a lot of the rest of the call's processing is automated.