ABSTRACT
Back in the days of the manual telephone exchange there was the 'Unfortunate Call'. In the 1980s the office telephone system evolved into that rare device – the dedicated computer. It ran only one programme – connecting telephone calls. That could not last for long, and soon the digital Private Automatic Branch Exchange (PABX) was sending out management information about the calls it was handling, as well as continuing to offer a range of standard features which had always been useful for answering calls in a group, such as hunting. Today the modern telephone system is capable of providing automatic call distribution (ACD) facilities as an integral part of its feature set, albeit often at an extra charge from the supplier. Even large call centres now operate on the ACD portion of a PABX, which also serves the back office with regular telephone service simultaneously.
