Customer Service Line Experiencing Higher Than Normal Call Volume for 17th Consecutive Year

CHARLOTTE, NC — Telecommunications giant Verilink confirmed Tuesday that its customer service line is currently experiencing higher than normal call volume, marking the 17th consecutive year the company has reported unusually high demand every hour of every day since the line opened in 2009.

“We are experiencing higher than normal call volume,” said the company’s automated greeting, which has played before every single call to Verilink since the Obama administration. “Your call will be answered in the order it was received.”

According to internal records, Verilink has recorded “higher than normal” call volume during approximately 149,000 consecutive hours, including overnight, on weekends, on federal holidays, during the Super Bowl, and on one Tuesday in 2014 when the company’s own phone system was down.

“We’ve heard the message every time we call, too,” admitted one Verilink employee, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Even from inside the building. I called my own department once to test a transfer, and a recording told me we were experiencing unusually high volume. I was the only person in the office.”

Statisticians say the company’s claim raises serious mathematical questions.

“By definition, ‘normal’ refers to the typical or average state of a system,” said Dr. Jennifer Lowe, a professor of statistics at Duke University. “If call volume is higher than normal every hour for 17 years, then the higher volume is the normal volume. At that point, what they’re really saying is, ‘We are experiencing exactly the call volume we always experience, which we have decided not to staff for.’”

Lowe said her team attempted to identify a single moment in Verilink’s history when call volume could have been considered normal.

“We looked at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday in February. Still higher than normal. We looked at the morning after a blizzard knocked out power to half the country. Higher than normal, which, okay, fair. We looked at the day after the company briefly stopped existing during a merger. Still higher than normal. Nobody was even a customer that day.”

Verilink defended its greeting, noting that call volume fluctuates and that the message is “technically accurate in a spiritual sense.”

“Every day is special,” said Verilink spokesperson Todd Ramsey. “Every call is unique. And compared to a world in which nobody calls us at all, which is the world we would prefer, today’s volume is very much higher than normal.”

Customers say they have grown accustomed to the message.

“I don’t even hear it anymore,” said longtime subscriber Frank Doyle, 61. “It’s like the ocean. It’s just always there. When my wife passed, the only other voice I heard consistently for the next month was that lady telling me they were busier than usual. I found it oddly comforting. At least something in my life was predictable.”

At press time, Verilink had announced it was investigating a surge in call volume, after a recording error briefly caused the greeting to say, “We are experiencing normal call volume,” triggering a flood of confused customers calling to ask what was wrong.