The reader, Austin H., writes:

I find the easiest way to get your issue heard is to call the corporate offices and ask to be transferred to the office of the CEO, the assistant to the CEO, or some similar entity (reference the executive by name if you want to sound like you really know what you're doing). To find the corporate phone number, a little basic sleuthing in Google is necessary, since the normal customer service number will likely either not know the phone number or not be willing to give it out. For publicly traded companies, just plug the ticker symbol into Google and pull up the Google Finance profile page--the phone number will usually be listed under "Company Facts." Even if the company is not publicly traded, it usually isn't difficult to find the phone number using Google--it may even be listed in some obscure corner of the company's web site. Alternatively, you can also attempt to find the email address of the CEO or other executive, but I find that calling is often faster, because that makes them realize that you are so upset about something that you took the effort to find out who to call.

Mr. H adds that the goal isn't to speak with the CEO, but to get to the people who respond to C-level inquiries, "wonderful people who can make things right when everything else has gone wrong," as Mr. H calls them.

Read the rest of Austin H.'s advice on the Consumerist.

Any agents or managers want to comment on this? In a perfect world, none of this would be necessary. Sometimes frustrated and impatient customers with heavy notions of entitlement think they have to speak with someone in charge any time they want something.

ICMI's Queue Tips page has advice on how to deal with those pesky "I wanna talk to your supervisor" demands here. One respondent writes: "I was working in a call center with just 40 seats and when customers insist on talking to supervisor we just passed it to the next guy, introducing him as supervisor." That would confirm the suspicions of most frustrated callers.

Another respondent says agents need to be confident enough, and empowered enough to tell any caller that they can handle the caller's issue. "We need to put the ball back into our staff’s court as referring problematic customers is usually a cop out," she writes.

The last respondent's advice is the most important: "If the customer keeps on insisting he/she should be transferred immediately."

If anyone out there has any further advice, e-mail us.