call center

American

[kawl sen-ter] / ˈkɔl ˌsɛn tər /

noun

an office or department that makes and receives a high volume of phone calls for an enterprise, as outbound sales and telemarketing calls or inbound customer service and technical support calls.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

call centers

plural

Etymology

Origin of call center

First recorded in 1975–80

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

call center

“You needed a call center, you needed to hire interviewers and you needed some sort of data processing,” he said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2026

In March 2025, the company announced a partnership with Nvidia to accelerate the development of AI technologies to drive efficiency in drive-through ordering and call center operations as well as to assess restaurant performance.

From Barron's ● Jun. 16, 2026

You can only book it by calling a call center.

From Slate ● Jun. 6, 2026

Merging with the call center, however, turned out to be major undertaking.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 30, 2026

The next step for those applicants who are hired at a call center is the training program, which they are paid to attend.

From "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023