My father in law, who at 71 is fairly tech savvy, still defaults to calling when he needs help with something. He's always saying "I was on the phone with Apple for 3 hours yesterday" or "I was on the phone with Xfinity all day yesterday."

I think if you're from a certain era, you just pick up the phone first and want to talk to somebody, even if it might be pretty easy to find what you're looking for online.

Must depend on eras, yes, because personally I avoid using the phone at all costs. I'd rather take my eyes out with a spindle gouge than talk to someone over the damn phone

That often depends on your definition of easy – most large companies have poorly designed or buggy websites, lousy account management, etc. The problem is that the phone acts as a safety valve for those problems but when management sees the cost they react by trying to have fewer humans answering the phone rather than getting serious about UX.

my guess is that this is not the case, but it's still worth it to handle any situation they can with a robot, or as a consolation, an impatient customer.