We live in a very fast-paced environment so the call center may be looked upon as a boon for modern day living. By that I mean in its base form you call some faceless person and they deal with your problem.

Now, in its most simplistic form, this would seem terrific. Imagine your washing machine breaks down, you call a number, without knowing it you are transferred to a call center. The person takes down your information and hopefully everything is OK. Next call please!

Let's take a step back. Most major companies use call centers now. I understand they are cost-effective and the shareholders of that company like it because the "efficiency" is up simply because company phone lines are not clogged up with customer service issues.

Call centers by the way can handle as many differing company issues as their system will allow. So, you may be phoning with a question about your hypothetical washing machine part, your next door neighbour needs a part for his vacuum cleaner and your relative has a question about a computer problem. Chances are the same call center are dealing with the three different calls. Just different staff.

How about the impersonal dealings. That, of course is very true. You are just talking to a voice. He/she doesn't really understand how upset you are (that's if you have a complaint). They simply want to process the query as quickly as possible and move on to the next one. Now, this is where things start getting a bit tricky. A fair proportion of call centers now operate on the sub continent of India. You don't need to be an economist to understand the reason why. Very nice folk the Indians. However, I challenge anyone to tell me that if you are talking to an Indian person and you are from another predominantly English-speaking nation, that you don't have problems with the Indian accent.

Now this is no "fault" of the operator. Naturally, they are trying to give us the best service possible and no doubt they do. But first up, how can the service be completely efficient if you have to keep asking the operator to repeat themselves so you can get an understanding of what they are saying.

This is not a gripe about Indian folk in call centers. I merely point out the fact that call centers are set up purportedly to increase efficiency and save money. After what has been said in the previous paragraph, I very much doubt if that is the case.

In any case, with customer service, I look forward to - no expect - to talk to someone who has a knowledge of the topic I am about to discuss. I feel it is an important part of what I want. I don't subscribe to the view that if we didn't have call centers that the cost of products would increase. If that be the case why, when call centers were introduced, didn't the price of goods come down.

Companies seem to follow patterns of other companies. I just sometimes wonder if that is a little ostrich-like in thinking. Perhaps in time we will revert to the old-fashioned ways of buying things over the counter and paying for them as we go. Let's hope so.