If you're asking seriously... Because, as the AI continues to improve, more and more users will choose not to fail out intentionally, reducing the required level of human staffing for a certain number of customers / orders. It's just like today - there are some users who will keeping "hitting 0" to get to a human, but many others who won't.
As a human who always hits 0 or bails out, I think this is yet to be proven. There are even products to help with this. If legislation is required to always provide a human for customer service, that can be done.
People use the phone tree not because they want to, but because they have limited alternatives. Companies deploy them for line goes up ("how can we provide as little value as possible for as much profit as possible without the customer leaving"), not for the benefit of the customer.
Yes - and the point is, if everyone availed themselves of the alternative (e.g., escaping the phone tree), as previous post implied, then "line wouldn't go up" and companies would stop.
That would be the customer of the phone tree software...
Of course it exists for their benefit. But, if all customers escaped from it, then it would be pointless and companies would stop - why spend money on something the doesn't reduce costs? So, since companies do, in fact, implement and retain phone trees, they are undoubtedly benefitting from doing so. And, to loop back to the start of this branch, if AI-driven "phone trees" do a better job than traditional ones (and there's no reason to suspect that they won't, over time), then fewer customers would opt out and it would be more beneficial to companies.
