What are automated attendants?
Automated attendants are those computerized or pre-recorded voices customers often here when calling a corporation's customer service department.
Personally, I can't stand them, and often believe that they cost the company more in goodwill than they save in labor, similar to outsourcing tele-services to another country where technically the staff speak English, but with such a strong accent its difficult to communicate.
One of the problems I've experienced with automated attendants is that they do not recognize my VOIP-powered phone button pushes. I can hear the tone - why can't they?