Call Centres: efficient but unhelpful?

An interesting clip from an interesting article by economics guru Ross Gittins in the Sydney Morning Herald during the week. From "An efficient ride up the garden path":

One example of means supplanting ends that always springs to my mind is the way we have to put up with talking to the companies we deal with via call centres.

We all hate them, yet we've had them thrust on us. Why? Because, if you ignore all the time-wasting, frustration and misinformation to customers, the introduction of call centres has greatly increased the efficiency and productivity of our big companies.

Part of the productivity improvement of which the Howard Government so frequently boasts has come from the move to call centres. And most of us - not just the rich, but most of us - have shared in the fruits of that productivity improvement, in the form of the higher real wages the Government also keeps reminding us of.

Trouble is, though our incomes are higher as a result of call centres, our quality of life is lower - lower than when we were poorer. Why is this a good deal?

[The worst thing about call centres is the misinformation. The goods and services we buy have become more complex - which is why we have to keep ringing up about them - but, at a time when access to specialist advice has become more necessary, companies fob us off with generalists, phone-answerers who know surprisingly little about the product.]