Does anyone have any ideas on who the first call centre was in the UK?
I'm guessing that this may have been the first ACD system.
I think that FirstDirect was operational from around 1989, but TSB PhoneBank may have been a bit older.
I'm guessing that BA may be a candidate, but possibly it may be one of the USA based airlines.
Aspect set up in the UK in 1988/89, but I think that Datapoint were already operating here at that time.
How about one for one of the mobile phone networks in the 80s like Vodafone or Cellnet? With loads of yuppies with massive bricks who needed help, there would have to be some sort of support structure in place.
According to an old contact of mine, Datapoint installed the first Lloyds contact centre in 1984.
He was the CIO, so a good source.
I hope this is useful.
Jason
Does the first call centre have to be one that installed an ACD system of which in my day i remember such companies as
Aspect
STS
SDX (now Avaya)
Toshiba ( Yeah they even had a call centre module)
Or do you need to look and see when call centre/contact centre became part of our industry language and may have related to the devlopment of the first call centres
I've got some good leads from a number of people. So far I have found Birmingham Post in 1966, the Manchester Evening News in 1970 and Barclaycard in 1972.
Does anyone know when First direct and Direct Line started?
There is some stuff on Wiki about them
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Direct
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Line
Don,t know how accurate the information is though
This is where all of the research ended up
http://www.callcentrehelper.com/the-history-of-the-call-centre-15085.htm
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