David Weinberger writes about
standard phone trees:
Paul English at GetHuman in his blog muses that we should come up with a standard phone tree, such as:0 for operator, 1 for customer service, 2 for sales, 3 for billing questions, etc. Then I would never have to listen to the stupid "Your call is important to us" nonsense. The * key might always mean go back and the # key might always mean confirm. Or something like that.
He proposes a company that conforms to this to-be-invented phone tree could play a little musical sequence at the beginning of the call to let us know that we can just punch the standard numbers.
Obvious.