FWIW, I (and I'm prepared to be flamed for this) think that y'all need to learn how to use the phone trees. They're not there to confuse you or to shirk off the responsibility of having to deal with you, they are there to help get you to the proper department.
Comcast was one place, at least in ABQ, where I fought to get the IVR to hang up on folks that refused to follow the prompts. We were successful there. After the 3 strike and you're out phone tree was implemented, the number of transfers dropped under 5%. Before, it was around 40-50%. And I guarantee you that about 90% of those that were transferred bitched about being transferred.
If you are a company with more than 1000 customers, you can no longer have a switch operator that handles every call and gets them to the right department. Its not cost efficient, and its not what customers want. They want to get to the right department the first time, without being transferred. Studies have been done that show this.
And either a Speech IVR or Classic IVR is the only way to achieve this. Sucks, but its true.