I’ve been mostly flying with the AI ATC on, and used to let my co-pilot handle comms but found I was not paying enough attention and the co-pilot would acknowledge instructions I would then not follow until ATC asked me to expedite. 
But flying with manual comms means a lot of keyboard button pushing to open the ATC window and select (usually) the first option, and I’m flying using a controller (currently an Xbox One controller until I get my hands on a yoke…)
Turns out it’s easy to map the ATC show/hide and ‘option 1’ commands to your controller in settings, so you don’t have to take your hands off the controller for the most common situations. Feels MUCH more immersive.
On the Xbox One controller, I picked X + LT for show/hide and X + RT for option 1. It will warn these conflict with some drone control options, but this should be harmless – the drone mode disables regular controls.
Happy landings, all!