Originally Posted by
Often1
As others note time and again, large companies have business processes in place to route communications to the proper people no matter the channel (letter, email, call) or the addressee (CEO, generic customer service). Some miniscule % are pulled every day for senior level review and even the CEO may see 2-3 of these. But, writing to the CEO doesn't get you anything other than the delay of having the letter scanned in and allocated through the CRM database.
You will sometimes see that companies pander by responding to these things with terms like "executive level review" and the like, but it's all the same thing. Bear in mind that if writing to the CEO got better results than use of the CS webform, nobody in their right mind would use the webform.
If you send in a webform to AA, it's the same as sending a Fedex to the CEO, except that the former will get attention faster than the latter.
That's only partially true. I've worked or consulted for a lot of large companies, and a common universal thread that I always go looking for is that communication gap. Sometimes it's just internal, but it's shocking how many companies have management who have no idea what their customers think or feel.
IMHO, it's always worth putting the communication through the regular channels, but a follow up to a higher level contact doesn't hurt if you don't get a response. I wouldn't start up top and work my way down, though, because even if you do reach an exec directly, he/she will first go ask the department that handles such things what they've attempted to do to fix. If they've never heard of you, the exec isn't going to step in on your behalf, he's just going to hand over your letter and say handle this.
Yes, these folks have admins that read/screen most of their email, but most want to see the complaints. The admin might check with customer relations first and give it to them if they haven't done anything, though.
Start with the normal channels, but have an escalation path if you don't get a response.