Comment by fainpul

> Human receptionists were far better than IVRs and “press 3 for” automation, but it was cheaper and good enough.

Good enough? Depends on who you ask. It was and is clearly terrible for the users (customers). People hate to navigate huge, invisible menus by slowly pressing buttons or speaking single words very clearly, but the business doesn't really care about that and deems it "worth it" for the money saved.

This is a pattern one can find all over the place: make something worse but cheaper, as long as someone else, not the business, bears the cost.