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The survey, carried out by market research firm Vanson Bourne, found that 51 per cent of respondents only interacted online with their High Street banks. The study of 1,000 people in the UK and Ireland found that 29 per cent of people only contacted their credit card companies via online means.

The research also found that nearly four in ten people (37 per cent) only get in touch with their telecom

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or mobile phone operator through the Internet.

Bradley de Souza, industry development director of CA, the company who commissioned the survey, said that one thing that caused people to use the internet to contact companies was the spiralling cost of contacting them on the telephone.

'An increasing number of organisations are setting up premium rate numbers and moving away from the free phone, 0800 services,' he said. 'As a result, consumers are now viewing call centres as a premium service and have higher service expectations associated with them, and call centres are failing to raise the bar.'

He said that when customers pay for a service it is not acceptable for it to fall down.

'If these providers are to reduce customer churn then they need to bridge this service quality gap,' said de Souza.

He said that companies need to identify and remove bottlenecks that slow down performance of call centres, such as congested Lans, poorly managed telephone systems and overly complex call centre applications.