What’s your preferred method of contacting customer support? Online chat, calling a representative on the phone, or visiting a store/associate in person?
Getting a human to answer? Very rare these days. They prefer the virtual assistants which are mostly useless and frustrating.
robertpri… Good to hear from you!.. are you set up in your new digs yet?
Thanks! Still in chaos mode, “in-between”
This is a trick that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. You call up a customer No service # and you’re in voicemail hell. Try hitting “zero” twice. Sometimes it will take you to a real person. Some times you have to wait till you’re out of the first one or two “levels” of the voicemail to try it.
Never tried it but I once heard a suggestion on how to speak with the CEO (or any other high ranking person).
When you call you will get their Secretary or Gatekeeper. You say “This is Mr Simmons. I want to know what he is going to do about my PREGNANT daughter!”.
Alternatively, “This is his neighbor Fred. SHould there be movers taking his furniture out to their truck?”
You can imagine this might get you put straight though to the person 
Then again, the story goes that when you called Hewlett Packard and asked for Dave or Bill, they answered their own phone. Why don’t more owners and Managers do that?
Then there is this story: “I first met Bill Hewlett when he answered his home phone and generously spoke to a 12-year-old kid looking for spare electronic components to build a frequency counter. The year was 1967 and the kid was me,” Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs said in a statement.
Lavarock… I hope the 
at the end of your suggestion makes the point to all readers that you are joking.
If someone DID succeed in getting through the mahogany-row gatekeepers using your suggested tactics, I doubt they would get a warm, reception. 
Don’t know if this works or not. Heard that if you start screaming obscenities into the phone, you will get a Human.
Here’s what I posted about a year ago in a thread about customer no-service… it still apples:
"Just the threat of resorting to social media to tell the world about your problem often solves the problem. It’s called “escalating the complaint.”
If you can get someone on the phone, explain the problem and if they cannot help you first ask them for their name, be nice and courteous, thank them and then tell them you want to speak with their supervisor or 2nd-level support. Repeat the process again and if you get the same answer, request the next level and when you are told they cannot do it tell them that they are forcing you to resort to putting a video up on social media to inform others of your problem.
The higher you can get up the chain, the more receptive you’ll find they are to find a way to solve your problem."
That is my #1 problem
My favorite way to get support is to yell “AGENT” over and over again at the top of my lungs while listening to the auto attendant
I have written and installed a few of those “Automated Assistants” on phone services. Some of the ones I created have hidden menus and options. For example, If asked to press 1 or 2, there may be a 3-9 and/or 0 options that is just not spoken of.
One farm here has an automated attendant and I give options 1-6. There is another option which rings the Farm Managers cellphone. That way we can disable the option or change it without having to give all workers his new number. Also when he goes on vacation, the alternate managers phone is rung by that same option.
So, just try randomly trying other numbers. If someone answers, act as though you called the proper number but somehow the ‘system’ redirected you. The person may just transfer you into the head of a queue for Customer Service.
I have two stories of higher ups answering a phone unexpectedly. The less shocking one was when I called to set up an appointment to meet a potential new OB, and the doctor himself answered the phone. The other, which occurred a few years earlier, I was calling the personnel office about something related to Reserve Duty. Large 800 number that has many, many offices, with a large branching push this number for x, that for y, etc. The main number was answered by the chief justice who simply said his last name, and I asked for whatever office I was trying to reach. He very gruffly demanded to know how I got this number, and stated who he was. I told him the number I had dialed, and who I was calling, and after he said that was not the number the phone had connected to, I politely said goodbye. And hung up while being a bit shell shocked. So that’s how I sort of met Justice Rehnquist. I don’t recall the doctor’s name as I ended up using a different one.