A method and system adaptively substitutes a single dialing button sequence for a selected action in a voice menu of a telephone system. A shortcut message in the voice menu prompts a caller to select a shortcut button to acheive a shortcut action. The system then accumulates counts related to frequencies of occurrence of a plurality of actions prompted by the voice menu. The system then ranks the plurality of actions by their respective accumulated counts and determines if any one of the plurality of actions has an accumulated count greater than an accumulated count of the shortcut action. If it does, then the system causes the substitution the one of the plurality of actions and a corresponding message for the shortcut action and the shortcut message in the voice menu.