In today’s world, we take it for granted that we can connect with people all over the
country and even around the world.
It’s a salesperson’s dream.
But big businesses were able to do this before the digital age, thanks to a thing we love
to hate; the call centre.
Call centres are synonymous with unwanted intrusions, infuriating wait times and a Kafkaesque
nightmare of bureaucracy, where you are bounced from operator to operator, never getting the
answers you need.
But is this an accurate reflection or just a stereotype?
Today, we’re going to look at the history of call centers and how they grew after an
innovation by Rockwell International.
We’ll see the benefits they offered customers, how public opinion changed over the years
and we’ll finish with a few examples of how they are used well in the modern world.
Let's jump into it!
When the first telephone systems appeared, operators would have to manually move wires
around, in order to connect a call.
And when businesses adopted the phone, they would need their own operator to pass the
incoming calls around the building.
If you only have one incoming number, there was a hard limit on the volume of calls you
could process.
Rockwell International likes to claim they created the first ever call centre, but in fact
this isn’t true.
It’s hard to really pin down a true first, since there were so many small steps before the
call center was actually invented, but it’s often said to be a UK organisation called
Birmingham Press and Mail, back in 1965.
A team of agents sat in rows of desks and they took calls through a private automatic
branch exchange, a piece of electronic equipment that could automatically connect external
callers with various internal extensions, so you could deal with multiple calls to a
single number.
You’d still need an operator to manage calls but it could be done much faster as they weren’t
physically moving the wires around.
But it was when Rockwell created an automatic call distributor or ATC when things substantially
moved forward.
They invented it for Continental Airlines, who wanted to replace human operators and
greatly increase their call capacity.
They had asked AT&T but the phone giant told them it would take 8 years to create the type
of system they wanted so Continental turned to Rockwell.
The system went live in 1973 and the benefits to Continental were obvious from the beginning.
Now, customers wouldn’t need to go into branches to deal with issues and check information,
they could do it easily on the phone.
And with the ATC, customers would be dealt with quickly and efficiently, keeping them
happy and keeping wait times low.
So, almost every major company followed suit, building call centres across the world.
And the technology kept on coming.
Touch tone phones gave customers an input method so they could answer automated questions
at the start of the call, making it easier to manage their customer service experience.
Interactive voice responses were giving people information like their bank balance, all the
way back in the 70s.
And 1-800 numbers greatly increased the number of people calling in since they didn’t have
to bear the cost themselves anymore.
However, although all this innovation helped grow the capacity of call centres, customers
became increasingly frustrated by the interactions with automated services; listening to long
recorded messages, typing out codes on their touch dial phone, crying in annoyance when
they got cut off again.
To save money and cut down on that issues the next step was outsourcing, where, for
English speaking customers at least, they would call in and discover they were talking
to an agent in India, China, Eastern Europe, South America rather than their own country.
This created a lot of communication problems, partly because of accents but also due to
a lack of cultural knowledge, such as local geography, local businesses and so on.
The training manuals also forced a lot of these customer service personnel to stick
closely to a script which led to even more frustration.
When you combine this with the growth of cold-calling from telemarketers in the 90s and early 2000s,
it’s no surprise that call-centres became hugely unpopular with the general public.
That led to a huge backlash with the invention of do not call lists and a lot of different
products that were invented to stop spam callers.
So, where are we now?
Well, most businesses have seen the importance of local knowledge.
Since we have tools like online chat and email available, companies have realised that if
a customer makes a call, it’s because they want that human interaction and understanding.
It’s all about the customer service agents.
Sure, there’s some great technology out there to speed up wait times and properly
allocate calls but the real value to the customer is in great service.
There has been a major shift away from the old rigid performance indicators that led
to those robotic annoying calls, where each agent was pushed to deal with everything as
quickly as possible and stick to a formulaic script.
Because why bother?
We can do most of that with automated voice response now anyway.
Thankfully, good centres now focus much more on resolving problems and customer satisfaction,
and base performance incentives around those.
Agents also get better data, so they are prepared for the type of call that’s coming in.
There are warnings now when a service has gone down or a fault has been found so that
agents can be prepared for the type and volume of calls coming in.
They'll be able to meet them head on rather than being caught off guard.
There's also a lot more cultural training going on for outsourced call centers and a
resurgence in American call centers especially with the major credit card companies who have
opened up call centers recently in Illinois, Delaware, Utah and all over the United States
to better offer that American customer service experience.
Zappos, the shoe company is also famous for bringing their offices to Las Vegas to better
hire cheap labour out there.
The most successful customer service departments are the ones that allow the customer to tackle
the problem on their own terms, with the communication form they are most comfortable with.
As technology evolves people have moved to live chat, using AI to better answer customer
service messages and also detailed FAQs to help people help themselves, but for a lot
of issues most people would still prefer to talk to a person and that's where the training
at the good old-fashioned call center comes in.
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