A claims assistant answers most customer queries in seconds, but customers complain that some responses take two days. About a third of cases escalate to specialist handlers, and the service levels agreed at launch cover only API availability and model response latency. What is the root cause of the expectation gap?

Answer: C — The service levels omitted review turnaround and staffing for escalated cases, which dominate their latency

(c) is right: for escalated cases the end-to-end latency is the human queue, so turnaround and staffing belong in the service levels and in what customers are told. (a) and (b) tune a part of the flow that already takes seconds. (d) trades a latency complaint for quality and risk problems on the cases that most need a person.