call center

American  

[kawl sen-ter] / ˈkɔl ˌsɛn tər /

noun

• call centers
  plural

1. 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.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• call centers
  plural

Etymology

Origin of call center

First recorded in 1975–80

Example Sentences

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

A few years ago, I pitched my boss, the chief marketing officer, on a radical idea to merge the call center with my social-media department.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 30, 2026

The man who owns the Cape Girardeau restaurant, Shannon Davis, has linked it and three other of his 12 McDonald’s franchises to the Colorado call center, which is run by another McDonald’s franchisee, Steven Bigari.

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