When you ring up a company to make a complaint or place an order, the chances are that if the company has more than a few
hundred employees you will be talking to somebody in a
Call Center.
Most call centres are large offices that contain rows of desks. Each desk will have a hands free telephone and a computer that displays the script - prompts that will help the call center worker know what to say.
When your call is routed into a center, the chances are the first thing you will hear is an IVR. These systems ususally have multiple choice options that you respond to with your telephone's DTMF tones.
These systems save call centres a lot of money because instead of training each operator how to handle every kind of problem; they only need to know about one or two issues that might occur.
The call routing system makes sure that each operator only gets a limited set of problems to deal with... that's why if you ask for something unusual, most call centre people wont be able to help you.
Call centres are a big deal for large companies, because they can shift their entire customer support operations to parts of the world where labor is cheap.
By minimizing training expenses and getting poor human beings to front for the corporation's Customer Relationship Management system companies save a lot of money.