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Customer Service vocabulary · Call Centre Operations

Call centre

Meaning in customer service, with examples

/ˈkɔːl ˌsentə/nounCore term

In customer service, call centre means: An office where many agents handle phone calls from customers, or make calls to them, for one or more companies.

In Turkish: çağrı merkezi, iletişim merkezi

How it is used

A call centre can be in-house or outsourced to another company. Many companies now say contact centre, because agents also handle chat, email and social media. Typical words around it: shifts, queues, headsets, scripts and targets.

Example sentences

  1. Our call centre is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

  2. Many graduates start their careers in a call centre.

Common collocations

  • call centre agent
  • work in a call centre
  • outsourced call centre
  • call centre manager
  • contact centre
  • agentA person who answers customers' calls, chats or emails and helps them on behalf of a company.
  • queueA line of calls, chats or tickets waiting to be answered, usually handled in the order they arrived.
  • inbound callA call that a customer makes to a company, for example to ask a question, report a problem or place an order.
  • outbound callA call that an agent makes to a customer, for example to follow up, confirm an appointment, collect a payment or sell a product.
  • IVRInteractive voice response: an automated phone menu that greets callers and lets them choose options by pressing keys or speaking.

More terms: Call Centre Operations

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