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There’s no doubt this is true in my mind.

I honestly bet 75% of the time I hear “We are currently experiencing high call volumes” someone answered within a minute or two.

In some sense that has the befit of a “surprise and delight” moment too because the consumer might be prepared to wait longer and then “whoa nice, that wasn’t so long!”

I think it is a common practice, and another I think will be just a static set of times that they play the "higher than average call volumes" message, rather than anything dynamic. I think call centre stuff is incredibly basic, even though the domain isn't that complicated.

Even in my internal company tech support line they play that "higher than expected call volumes" message, but their website also has counter on it that tells you just how many people are on hold and even when it is just one (me) it plays that message.

Easy for that to be true: just set your expectations to zero.

The only ones I believe are the ones that tell you the estimated wait time or number ahead of you (most of which offer to call you back).

It is funny to hear "our wait times are higher than average, your wait is estimated to be zero minutes".

It can't be that complicated.

My doctor's office phone manages "You are number two in the queue". Somewhere, maybe it was a previous doctor, added "and should expect to wait about 5 minutes".

All call centers are actually located in Lake Wobegon, where all the call wait times are above average.

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon#Recurring_monolog... , for the probably many people who don't know the reference.)

>i am absolutely positive, without proof of course, that this is an extremely common practice. my isp does the exact same thing with basically the same wording. "sorry, high call volumes right now. but hey, did you know you can do lots of stuff on the website? go to the website. please use the website".

Look up Erlang numbers for call centers. We absolutely know how to calculate required reps for a desired queue dwell. It is 100% a voluntary decision to degrade the Call Center to push people to web based automation. Consider this your proof. We have the equations. Executives make the active decision to not use them/use them to shift cost burden.

t. Helped implement a Call Center before, and we aimed for sub 5 minute queue dwell at all hours of the day.

Wait time is calculable; but you need an accurate forecast to staff and schedule. When I last worked in this space, forecasts were generated down to 15m granularity and agent work schedules (hours, break times, etc.) were derived from those forecasts.

I wonder how these systems work now...

What if you get a large number of people calling at very particular times? E.G. what if you're getting far more calls at 09:00 than at 09:15? You can't hire agents just to handle a 15-minute surge.

Erlang's model assumes that the world is static or at least predictable; it doesn't take into account things like the superBowl, a hurricane cancelling 90+% of flights from a major airport, or a much-larger-than-usual number of customers trying to cancel because of a previously-confidential price increase now being publicly announced.

Baseline demand affects the numbers much more than the unpredictable spikes do. You can come up with edge cases if you like, but the reality is that it all averages out pretty well with large volume.

"i am absolutely positive, without proof of course, that this is an extremely common practice. "

Health insurance does this for sure. From what I have seen I am convinced they have sophisticated systems to frustrate patients and providers until they give up.

Did they admit to it? Or get caught?