OVERVIEW

The customer call center has been around for longer than officially acknowledged. Call centers didn t begin to take commercial definition until the introduction in 1972 (by Collins Radio, now Rockwell Communications) of the first computer-controlled automatic call distributor (ACD) at Continental Airlines.

A functional ACD is the core building block of any successful customer call center and computer telephone integration or CTI. But as their manufacturers most specifically state the majority of ACDs are just that: telephone call distributors.

Prior to 1972 the airline and other businesses had been buying electromechanical call distribution equipment from the Bell System. These uniform call distributors had limited functionality and represented, in microcosm, the entire thinking that led to the breakup of the Bell monolith they knew what customers wanted and gave them that. Unfortunately for the Bell System, their customers believed otherwise and began to look elsewhere. This is what gave birth to a healthy industry of customer call center technology specialists.

As mentioned previously, Rockwell Communications (nee Collins Radio) built an electronic switching system for Continental Airlines that allowed changeable programmable inbound call routing and more extensive management reporting on the service levels offered by the airline the ACD. Probably the most significant issue in the system design was philosophical the system was built with an understanding of the mission critical nature of the airline reservation center.