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06/21/2003 Archived Entry: "Remember: Turboing is for special cases only"

I received an e-mail that pointed out something I thought I'd made clear in my article on turboing -- but, it turns out, I didn't make the point nearly as clear as I thought I had. Oops.

Let me say it plain (er, boldface): Don't turbo until you've tried the normal support process.

If you abuse the turbo technique, you may find that it stops working. Perhaps you'll get "blacklisted" at the company in question, and your calls stop going through. Maybe they'll set the "idiot" flag on your account. (I've known at least one company that would annotate their customer-support records with a flag indicating that a caller was known to be abusive and consistently wrong, as a warning to support reps that they should hold their ground.) It could even be that they'll put strong blocking of access to corporate offices in effect.

Here's what a reader had to say:

(This was received via e-mail after this site was mentioned on Slashdot.)

I just wanted to comment on the consequences of wide usage of Turboing.  You realize that it works because this kind of high level interception of execs is so rare and that, as human beings, they will want to help a real customer (which they don't get to talk to too often).  Alas, if this technique DID ever become widely used (I'll define widely as meaning the average CEO secrectary is getting enough of these calls that he/she finds out what 'Turboing' is) there will be immediate re-direct back to 1st level support for these 'queue jumpers' (the phrase the Support Management will use to describe people who unbalance the priotization of support resources by causing unwarranted executive intervention from people THAT AREN'T WILLING TO WORK WITH THE SYSTEM [even if their excessive demands are, justifiably, restrained by the system]).  Support Management will insist on the immediate redirect as the solution when exec mgmt complains that they are getting too many support requests showing up at executive offices.

It's important to only use the turbo technique when it's truly warranted. Yes, sometimes a company will suck so badly that they'll get nothing but escalations. For most companies, talking with a supervisor will suffice.

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