Today, companies and administrators suggest to their customers, prospects, users and partners multiple manners of contacting them (Ticket office, the Telephone, the E-mail, the Fax, Web, the mail).

 A Center of Contact is an organization's functional and technical device allowing an organization to manage all or any of its contacts.

 The first application of the Center of Contacts is the management of the phone contacts, the telephone being the first medium of contact. We define it  as a Call center. We can however note that the management of Méls takes a more and more important place(square) within the Centres of Contacts, the management of the interactions with Web living marginal.

  To diffuse of the Information, to realize or promote Sales or to supply Services. The Center of Contacts can be conceived or under a Qualitative angle (example: the Center of Support of a prestigious publisher) or under a Quantitative angle.

 The way the relation customer / user will be organized is very different as the Contacts are Anonymous or Personalized. For example, in the last case, it will be necessary that the agents of the Center of Contacts have access to data bases or to CRM type applications. 

The phone systems allowing the distribution of incoming phone calls are not the same as those who allow to generate important numbers of Outgoing phone calls.                            

The Center of Contacts is often conceived to manage the relations of the company / administration by the Telephone. In some cases, he has to take into account all the media of the relation Customer / user. We speak then about Center of Multi-channel Contacts. Finally, the problems of implementation and exploitation of the Center of Contacts will be very different as the agents establishing(constituting) the Center of Contacts are physically situated on a single site or on several sites.