chapter7.2

The chronic kicker, even the most violent critic, will frequently soften and be subdued in the presence of a patient, sympathetic listener—a listener who will be silent while the irate fault-finder dilates like a king cobra and spews the poison out of his system.

To illustrate: The New York Telephone Company discovered a few years ago that it had to deal with one of the most vicious customers who ever cursed a customer service representative.

And he did curse. He raved.

He threatened to tear the phone out by its roots.

He refused to pay certain charges that he declared were false.

He wrote letters to the newspapers.

He filed innumerable complaints with the Public Service Commission, and he started several suits against the telephone company.

At last, one of the company’s most skillful “trouble-shooters” was sent to interview this stormy petrel.

This “trouble-shooter” listened and let the cantankerous customer enjoy himself pouring out his tirade.

The telephone representative listened and said “yes” and sympathized with his grievance.

"He raved on and I listened for nearly three hours," the “troubleshooter” said as he related his experiences before one of the author’s classes.

"Then I went back and listened some more.

I interviewed him four times, and before the fourth visit was over I had become a charter member of an organization he was starting.

He called it the ‘Telephone Subscribers’ Protective Association.’

I am still a member of this organization, and, so far as I know, I’m the only member in the world today besides Mr. ----.

I listened and sympathized with him on every point that he made during these interviews.

He had never had a telephone representative talk with him that way before, and he became almost friendly.

The point on which I went to see him was not even mentioned on the first visit, nor was it mentioned on the second or third, but upon the fourth interview, I closed the case completely,

he paid all his bills in full, and for the first time in the history of his difficulties with the telephone company he voluntarily withdrew his complaints from the Public Service Commission.”

Doubtless Mr. ---- had considered himself a holy crusader, defending the public rights against callous exploitation.

But in reality, what he had really wanted was a feeling of importance.

He got this feeling of importance at first by kicking and complaining.

But as soon as he got his feeling of importance from a representative of the company, his imagined grievances vanished into thin air.

One morning years ago, an angry customer stormed into the office of Julian F. Detmer, founder of the Detmer Woolen Company, which later became the world’s largest distributor of woolens to the tailoring trade.

“This man owed us a small sum of money,” Mr. Detmer explained to me.

The customer denied it, but we knew he was wrong.

So our credit department had insisted that he pay.

After getting a number of letters from our credit department, he packed his grip, made a trip to Chicago, and hurried into my office to inform me not only that he was not going to pay that bill,

but that he was never going to buy another dollar’s worth of goods from the Detmer Woolen Company.

I listened patiently to all he had to say.

I was tempted to interrupt, but I realized that would be bad policy.

So I let him talk himself out.

When he finally simmered down and got in a receptive mood, I said quietly: ‘I want to thank you for coming to Chicago to tell me about this.

You have done me a great favor, for if our credit department has annoyed you, it may annoy other good customers, and that would be just too bad.

Believe me, I am far more eager to hear this than you are to tell it.’

That was the last thing in the world he expected me to say.

I think he was a trifle disappointed, because he had come to Chicago to tell me a thing or two, but here I was thanking him instead of scrapping with him.

I assured him we would wipe the charge off the books and forget it, because he was a very careful man with only one account to look after, while our clerks had to look after thousands.

Therefore, he was less likely to be wrong than we were.

I told him that I understood exactly how he felt and that, if I were in his shoes, I should undoubtedly feel precisely as he did.

Since he wasn’t going to buy from us anymore, I recommended some other woolen houses.

In the past, we had usually lunched together when he came to Chicago, so I invited him to have lunch with me this day.

He accepted reluctantly, but when we came back to the office he placed a larger order than ever before.

He returned home in a softened mood and, wanting to be just as fair with us as we had been with him, looked over his bills, found one that had been mislaid, and sent us a check with his apologies.

“Later, when his wife presented him with a baby boy, he gave his son the middle name of Detmer, and he remained a friend and customer of the house until his death twenty-two years afterwards.”

Years ago, a poor Dutch immigrant boy washed the windows of a bakery shop after school to help support his family.

His people were so poor that in addition he used to go out in the street with a basket every day and collect stray bits of coal that had fallen in the gutter where the coal wagons had delivered fuel.

That boy, Edward Bok, never got more than six years of schooling in his life; yet eventually he made himself one of the most successful magazine editors in the history of American journalism.

How did he do it?

That is a long story, but how he got his start can be told briefly.

He got his start by using the principles advocated in this chapter.

He left school when he was thirteen and became an office boy for Western Union, but he didn’t for one moment give up the idea of an education.

Instead, he started to educate himself.

He saved his carfares and went without lunch until he had enough money to buy an encyclopedia of American biography—and then he did an unheard-of thing.

He read the lives of famous people and wrote them asking for additional information about their childhoods.

He was a good listener. He asked famous people to tell him more about themselves.

He wrote General James A. Garfield, who was then running for President, and asked if it was true that he was once a tow boy on a canal;

and Garfield replied. He wrote General Grant asking about a certain battle, and Grant drew a map for him and invited this fourteen-year old boy to dinner and spent the evening talking to him.