AMTELCO's Modular Call Forwarding
 | | AMTELCO's MCF |
MCF (Modular Call Forwarding) was a product that took advantage of the introduction of call forwarding in the early 1980's. The first MCF series was developed in 1982. The first of the MCF series to hit the market was called CFM-1000 (Call Forwarding Module). The CFM-1000 gave call centers the ability to support up to 10 Mitey-Mites and up to 8 operators.
Soon after the CFM-1000 hit the market the name was changed to MCF-1200. At this time, support was added for FLC's (First Level Concentrator), the number of Mitey-Mites supported was expanded to 12, and the number of operators supported was expanded to 16. In later years the MCF-1200 system was upgraded to the MCF-1400. The MCF-1400 supported up to 14 Mitey-Mites, 14 FLC's and 16 operators.
One of the great capabilities that were new with the MCF product was the ability to back-up the database to a floppy disk drive. In later years, a number of variants of the MCF were produced to provide for the connection of more FLC's and more Mitey-Mites. Principally, these were the MCF-2000 and the MCF-2800.
The MCF operator interface was modeled after its predecessor, the Video III system. Operators were organized into groups of four. Each operator could see the calls that the other operators in the group were handling. Calls were answered using a telephone key system. The MCF system could operate in a paper-based manner, but with a few simple upgrades information retrieval and paperless messaging could be added with little difficulty.
The MCF system could be equipped with a telephone keypad similar to the Video III system or with the proprietary Unified Keyboard, which offered many more commands than the Video III system that only supported the keypad. In later years the MCF included switching that was able to support office phones, dial-outs, and connections to voice storage units.
The MCF continued as a strong product offering throughout the 1980's. An MCF system was the first AMTELCO product purchased by Mike Leibowitz, in 1986 for his Professional Answering Service in Charleston, SC. Mike is a former president of NAEO and was the first adopter of many AMTELCO products: the first Infinity 4.0 in 1994, the first infinity 5.0 in 1997 and the first Intelligent Series in 2003. Mike also was the first user of the Infinity Web Portal, Voice Logger, Printer Capture and Billing Link, having develop these products in partnership with AMTELCO.
"I had a cheap Candela system in November 1982 when I opened with three customers," Leibowitz recalls. "I replaced it with the MCF in 1986 and then got PC-MX in 1989 and sold the MCF to a local hospital for more than I had paid for it. They used it for a few years, then bought an Infinity and used that until 1997 when I bought their (doctors answering service) business from them."
Throughout the life of the MCF it included many upgrades to keep up with new technology and add new features. The introduction of the EVE (Electronic Video Exchange) system with its advanced paperless messaging and integrated switching sparked the decline in sales of the MCF system. The MCF system will forever be remembered as a solid and reliable system that helped bring call forwarding to the answering service market.
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