Just came across this. On Twitter of course. From a Computerworld story
Twitter causing shift away from call centres: Australian bank
NAB says Twitter now a major channel for customer service and complaints
By Lisa Banks | Sydney | Thursday, 9 June, 2011
The National Australia Bank’s (NAB) customers are increasingly turning to Twitter to have their customer complaints and enquires dealt with, the bank has claimed.
Speaking at a roundtable discussion on the role of social media in business, general manager of digital at the bank, Chris Smith, said NAB’s contact centre is no longer the first port of call for customers.
“We get 30 million calls a year — is it [our use of social media] measurable and can we achieve that ROI? We’re getting there,” Smith said. “Are people using social media instead of calling in? There is some channel switching happening.”
Smith said the bank’s use of social media only took off recently, with , and its ‘break up with your bank campaign’ being a major step up for NAB, which now employ five employees primarily for social media.
“We’re quite new and don’t have much of a background in social media,” Smith said. “We’ve had some footprints here are there, but last year our CEO said we had to get out into the Twittersphere and use social media better.
Very interesting stuff. Think it might be having an impact on politics and media too.
Shudder
Call centres 
I hate offshore call centres 
Twitter good
I’m not keen on the way business and consumerist values move to take over each new arena for non-commercial democratic interaction amongst ordinary folks.
.
Customers don’t use twitter to communicate WITH businesses. They use twitter to complain in public ABOUT businesses. The primary goal of any company dealing with a customer complaining via twitter is to get the conversation OFF twitter and to email or phone (and thus out of the public eye) as quickly as possible.
That’s not reshaping business practice. It’s just PR.