[extr]

Do you have direct experience with a call center where this was happening? This sounds like a ridiculous conspiracy theory. In every call center I've ever had experience in, median/mean hold time was a KPI that was relentlessly optimized for. Hourly demand was modeled and staffing levels were set such that hold times were kept to the minimum possible with the resources available. Calls-not-answered was an inverse metric. That's not to say the optimal hold time is always zero. It's also bad to have too many staff sitting idle "just in case" demand suddenly peaks. It's a tricky problem. But LLMs obviously obey the laws of compute scaling, not human scaling, so I would expect it to scale to demand very quickly.

[comfypotato]

Hold times are optimized for customer retention and profits. This implies that you’re both correct. It’s just the perspective: if people give up on their query but stay a customer that’s fine. Most call centers don’t exactly have the degree of customer service of a hospitality institution like a luxury hotel.

I’ve always appreciated the perspective that they just figure out how much staff they need to stop the customers from getting too pissed off.