Answer Geek: Phone Centers
<br> -- Q U E S T I O N: I work in a call center and would like to know how phone trees work.
— Susannah
A N S W E R: Ah, that scourge of modern life, the call center. Who hasn't known the aggravation of the dinner-interrupting phone call from someone like Susannah — nothing personal, of course, Susannah — urging you to change your long distance phone service, repair the ding in your windshield that you don't actually have, or make a donation to some rather dubious-sounding charitable organization? These days, telemarketing is a big business. According to one telemarketing industry organization study, there are more than 70,000 call centers in this country, where more than 7 million people earn a living.
Of course not every one of those call center employees — the usual job title is "agent" — is engaged full-time in the task of ringing you up to sell you something. A great many handle what are called "inbound calls" in industry jargon — things like calls to airline reservation numbers and customer services lines.
Those who are selling goods and services or soliciting donations are in the "outbound" end of the business. Lately, sophisticated call center management software has also given rise to something called "blended calling," which is a call center where agents get to deal with both incoming and outgoing calls.
In any case, because telemarketing is omnipresent, this seems like a good opportunity to discuss a few call center technology basics, starting with Susannah's question about phone trees. We'll also talk about predictive dialing, the more recent technology that has transformed telemarketing from a simple annoyance into something approaching a true nuisance.
On Creating Phone Trees
For the most part, phone trees are pretty straightforward. You dial into a call center and hear a menu of options — something along the lines of "if you'd like to wait for a really long time for someone who probably can't help you, please press one; if you'd like to wait even longer for someone who not only can't help, but will be rude, press two; if you'd like to wait so long that you'll finally hang up, press three." Once you make your choice, switching equipment sends you off to the proper extension, or, more likely, another menu of options. And so on. And on. And on.
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