actually, it is. let me explain.

Let's simplify and say that there are peak hours and low hours. 100 people call during a peak hour, and 25 during a low hour. The chance of calling during a peak hour is 80%, since you are four times as likely to be one of the 100 rather than one of the 25.

The same effect means that you are almost always on planes and trains that are very full, even though every now and then they ride almost empty. Fewer people get to experience empty train rides by definition.

Of course this effect falls apart when your usage patterns differ from everybody else's. If everybody takes the train at rush hour, you might ride an empty one at noon. Or, if you call the hotline while everybody else is sleeping, you might have a better chance.

But yeah companies also just lie to make themselves look better lol

It depends on their window.

If they include call volume data back to the Neolithic period in their calculations, then yes, call volumes are higher than average (the average being 0.001 calls per century, rounding up).

Pretty sure that's how they do the math.

"Your call is very important to us... but not so important that we would actually do anything about it like hiring more representatives. This message will repeat every 5 minutes until you get frustrated and hang up."

Yeah but it sounds a lot better than "We've pursued a policy of understaffing to save costs".

Interestingly, British consumer rights guru Martin Lewis is currently running a crowdsourced data gathering exercise on this in the UK.

The purpose being to identify if companies are purposefully playing these sorts of message no matter their actual call volume. (Which we all know they are, but this will help prove it)

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/report-high-call-volumes/

I sell and build call centers for a living.

Yeah, it's fake lol. I mean maybe for some businesses it isn't fake, but usually clients would ask us to make it where "if there's more than X calls in queue, play the message". Turns out, there's always more than X calls in queue. It's not actually looking at the average.

It's kinda weird, some things are just always like that, some things clients want to add in because the average user expects it.

Someone wanted a repeat caller to get bumped to the front of the queue. Literally encouraging the "if I hang up and call back I'll get there sooner" people. Awful.