> We're at the point where phone calls are so cheap that I doubt it costs them more than the salary of the representative.
Oh wow, I had not even taken that into consideration.
Checking prices on the first API-service that I know of, with standard prices (no need of any volume).
€ 0.064/min = € 3.84/hour https://46elks.com/pricing/se-eur#prices
Salary cost would probably be about 10x that, and with volume I expect the calling cost to drastically go down.
You either go online, or set it up from the voice bot, and when it's your turn the provider just calls you back. We're at the point where phone calls are so cheap that I doubt it costs them more than the salary of the representative.
So what Google does is pretty much using AI to work around the fact that service providers don't provide this simple service.