If you've ever experienced the joys of dialling into a call centre, you may be pleased to hear that the annoying piped music and a never-ending choice of touch-tone phone commands could soon be a thing of the past.

Advancements in technology should provide customers with a much more user-friendly experience, but what do they mean for call centre staff?

Online retailer lastminute.com, for one, has just introduced new voice recognition technology to enable consumers to order products and arrange delivery over the telephone without ever having to speak to an operator.

The dotcom, which offers impulse buyers access to last minute bargains, claims that it's the first European ebusiness company to offer this capability to its customers.

"Voice recognition develops and enhances the convenience element of the lastminute.com business model," claims Brent Hoberman, the firm's chief executive. "Customers can now access lastminute.com across the platform of their choice, including the PC, telephone, mobile, Wap, interactive digital TV or personal digital assistant."

The company hopes that the technology will not only help it cut costs but also boost revenues.

But good customer service also depends on having contented call centre staff, so it's not only customers that should be kept happy and loyal. Increasingly, companies recognise the need to achieve equally high satisfaction levels among their employees.

And voice recognition technology is just one of a host of developments forcing a radical shift in what it means to work in such an environment.

The traditional image of a call centre agent leaves many people cold at the thought of pursuing a career in that field. But it's precisely those negative connotations that companies such as Abbey National's online venture Cahoot are going out of their way to try and change.

Cahoot, which uses the services of US-based specialist Fiserv to run its call centres, has attempted to recruit a younger, more educated, internet-aware crowd and has equipped an office for them that looks more like a hangout for dedicated dotcom types than a telecommunications shed.

Online small business listing service Scoot is also trying to inject a dotcom atmosphere into its call centre, while at the same time giving staff the opportunity to move to jobs elsewhere in the company.

Admittedly, there's a price to play for all this. Cahoot, for example, is forking out between 10 and 15 per cent more than normal market rates to recruit its staff, but can you put a price on customer and staff satisfaction?