Less for More

Here's a commercial. I've been through a stressful situation to stress something that has to be stressed.


Just a while back I had an agent rush to me, asking for me to speak with his customer because he was asking for a supervisor. The customer already spent a good amount of time with the agent in question, and judging from the look on the agent's face, I knew that the ensuing conversation I was going to have with him wasn't going to be pretty.


With every deliberate deep breath and with every accusatory statement against the company I represented, I kept telling myself, I knew it. I gotta go ahead and say sorry to yet another person who's been inconvenienced. However, this call was deemed bloggable because it serves as a demonstration of what I could be doing better.


See, it took me 30 minutes to speak with Mr. H, and 20 of those minutes were spent just listening to the customer complain and bring out what he feels about the organization I worked for. He did most of the talking. He complained about the incompetence of the agent, the product, and the service he was getting. I actually had more than one reason to throw him off and to tell him to back down and shut up. I felt the draw, the temptation to just say sorry and sound like I meant it when all I wanted was for him to hang up.


The steps we took to resolve his issue took close to a couple of minutes. I thought he was going to hang up like the ingrate that he sounded like. He didn't. He took the sizeable chunk of time left to express his thanks, for resolving the problem he had, and more importantly, for listening. You could hear it that he wanted to talk to me, not just as a customer, but as a guy who recognizes true empathy when he hears it.


That just struck me for some reason. I mean, oftentimes people thank you for helping them out, but this guy stood out by appreciating me listening to him more than me helping him out. He sounded like a guy who could have figured that problem out in the first place, but I guess some people just want to let things out, and in the process, help themselves.


The act of being on the receiving end is pretty tough when we listen to people who do their damndest to be heard. With the pace of all that goes on around the world, I suppose it's quite difficult for us to resist speaking before actually listening. This is one thing that I guess I had to go through to appreciate the act of listening to anyone else, irate or not. I suppose we all have to learn this if we want to make a true difference wherever we go.


I'm pretty sure that this is one very basic thing to talk about, but I guess this would serve as a reminder for all of us to listen to say a whole lot more.


"He who answers before listening— that is his folly and his shame."

-Proverbs 18:13


God bless that man. I pray that I really made a difference in his perception of things.


Lord knows the trouble I got myself into for running my mouth without listening... or even thinking, for that matter.


God bless you.