A location where telephone calls to and from customers are handled. The location is often remote from – indeed sometimes on a different continent from – both the caller and the business he or she is trying to deal with. Operators are generally expected to keep calls (often to a fixed script) as brief as possible and process as many as possible during their shift. Their performance is monitored by a supervisor for the purpose of reward or discipline. It is an assembly line for the twenty-first century.