Phone menus have quietly promoted callers from customers to unpaid junior administrators. Before a human says hello, callers type an account number, recite a birth date, choose from a decision tree, and summarize the problem to a robot whose chief talent is saying “I didn’t get that.” Then an agent asks for the same essentials as if the previous five minutes were an optional side quest.
This is not an argument against verification or against the people answering calls. Agents need accurate information, and systems do not always share it. The rant is aimed at the handoff: if a menu collects a detail, the next person should see it—or the menu should explain why it is asking.
A decent phone system should do less interviewing and more routing: collect only what it can pass along, preserve the customer’s issue summary, and give a human a clean start. Is your most annoying phone-menu chore repetition, or something even more theatrical?