Comment by sib

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.