Yup that's accurate. I was a regular old support drone who had some connections that allowed for some special paths to engineering.

We had 'official' faster escalation paths but those inevitably are determined by $$$ and there's always more ways to measure 'important customer' than can be defined / shown in $$$.

Management was totally aware of it all and supportive.

But eventually I got tired of the land of 'support' and moved on for a variety of reasons, mostly because time and again I saw support treated like the usual 'cost center' and I didn't want to be a part of that.