Most major, well-known businesses use Call / Contact Centres to interact with their customers. A Call Center is a communication and customer relations tool which uses the telephone as a basic communication. A Contact Centre is a centralised office used to receive and transmit a large volume of telephone enquiries and orders, although contact can also be made via channels other than the telephone, such as via fax, email, live chat, text message or multimedia message, amongst others.

Both of them are managed by human beings using the required and available human, physical and technological resources, based on work methodologies and certain suitable processes, to meet the needs of and provide services to each unique client with the aim of attracting new clients and making them loyal to the organisation, making it viable.

Shared Service Centres (CSC) have become an important organisational model, particularly within large companies. They are independent business units which bring together certain support processes and provide them as services. As such, CSCs can be used to make compan y operations more efficient.

The Call / Contact Centre sector in Spain now consists of more than 225 platforms. It generates a turnover of 1, 385 million euros and employs 58,677 workers; 70% of these workers are women, and the majority of employees are between 26 and 35 years of age.

Around 87% of companies which use a call/contact centre in Spain have at least one of their own in-house centres. The remaining 13% do not have their own centre and have decided to outsource the service to specialised call/contact centre companies, 27% of which are based in Madrid.