I was told by the person manning the desk they could not help me, only the representative on the phone could and no, they did not have a direct line.
After 30min on hold person on the phone said they could not tell me what hertz/budget would have a car for my reservation though they were the reservation desk. They transferred me to customer service where I waited for 90 min to no avail.
Even worse, I was in a total loop at booking.com. Enter reservation number pls: easy. Enter pin: there isn't one. Immediate disconnect. No representative, no series of numbers, no alternate phone number available.
Usually, the robot will give you something like "i didn't understand you, can you please repeat that?" and blow 2 or 3 more times into the mic...
Afterwards, i'm usually transferred pretty quickly to a human being - presumably this is due to some accessibility requirements....
I personally don't want to talk to machines all that much either, but in for your reason. It's because the utility of such an interface sucks. The things can't actually do much other than bring something up on a screen. And they make mistakes half the time.