For years, customer service teams have treated the immediate request for a human agent as a design problem. When callers reject an automated experience before it has really begun, the natural instinct is to make the system sound warmer or more human. Rewrite the greeting. Acknowledge frustration. Tell callers they can speak naturally. The assumption is that if the experience feels less robotic, people will be more willing to engage with it. We recently saw evidence that something else matters…