Telephone switching system and method for controlling incoming telephone calls to remote agents and for collecting and providing call data

A telephone switching system for controlling communications between a caller and one of a plurality of agents, the telephone witching system comprising:

• an automatic call distributor for receiving an incoming telephone call from the caller and for selectively dialing a telephone number of the one of the agents;
• an agent telephonic unit associated with the one of the agents for answering the incoming telephone call;
• a telephone network connecting the agent telephonic unit to the automatic call distributor;
• an agent computer terminal for receiving instructions from the one of the agents, for generating control signals representative of the instructions and for providing the control signals directly to a central processing unit within the automatic call distributor to subsequently control the incoming telephone call;
• and
• a computer network for transmitting the control signals from the agent computer terminal to the automatic call distributor.