MCI strives for end to clogged call centers

Federal telecommunications services vendor MCI WorldCom will offer a service to route calls more efficiently into telephone centers at agencies, businesses and other organizations.

The new call-routing service, which uses Cisco Systems Inc.'s Network Application Manager, should eliminate some of the call bottlenecks that centers experience as callers wait to talk to the "next available" call-center worker, company officials said.

The new service should make call centers more efficient by directing each phone call to the call-center worker best able to help the caller, no matter where the worker is located, officials said.

MCI officials, who showcased their new offerings this week at the ComNet technology exposition in Washington, D.C., tout the product as one that will be especially helpful to agencies that operate more than one call center.

"If you're a federal agency and you have 800 service, this is something that you will be very interested in," said company spokesman Greg Blankenship.