When speaking to someone I know in the Call Centre, it got a bit chaotic during level 4 but when the Airline pleaded with people to only call in for flights within 48hrs (from memory), it became more manageable... although some people were still calling in about their 2021 bookings.
Once the full scale of COVID was realised however, it went nuts, especially in respect to refunds, but again, resources are not endless and you can't just bolster the call centre at the drop of the hat. Especially a local one. I'm sure "Off-shore" Call centres have people they can move around to bolster specific companies requirements as demand changes. Probably another reason why so many companies no longer keep them in house.
Unfortunately, whenever someone has to wait X hours to get through (or can't) the Media will write a full page article about. But Joe Blogs who got through and received a full refund, well, you need to sift through the reader comments on social media if you want their version of events. People have been getting refunds on compassionate grounds, but it's extremely time consuming as it's on a case by case basis. Something people don't like to admit, is there are people out there trying to take the piss so it has to be done manually. Plenty of refund requests have been for flights that weren't actually cancelled, but the event the people were flying to was... or for future flights that have not been cancelled yet.
At the end of the day, none of us are blind to how the media operate. Yes, it has been a shambles and the Airline(s) are playing catch up, but the media thrives on negative articles not positive ones. We also know that Airlines, like many Business, survive on future bookings revenue. If we want to talk about an industry wide shakeup then I'm all for it, but that's a discussion for tomorrow. People need to read the T's & C's of the tickets they purchase not just the Grab a Seat price.