….To borrow from Led Zeppelin. I was reading Andrew’s latest blog, and I realized I hadn’t done one in a long time. It’s not that I haven’t had anything going on – it’s more that, well, when you can do upwards of 130 emails in a day sometimes, blogging is the last thing you want to do! I've spent most of the summer trying to do outdoor exercise -- hikes and walks with hand weights as I zip around a duck pond near my house. But it looks like yesterday was the last of our good, warm Fall weather, and I'll be relegated to the gym from here on out for the most part!
Some of you may remember a post I did last Winter / Early spring about my favorite questions (“How much is your free demo?”)
There’s one I’ve been wanting to mention, but now, for the life of me, I can’t remember what it was…I have it written down at my desk at work, but as I’m home – well, ‘twon’t do me much good.
But I did have one conversation the other day that drove me home to a double martini (a rare thing, mind you; usually it’s just a single once or twice a week…if that. But I’ll admit: I make a damn good dirty martini!) I was fried on doing emails, and so I decided to spend the rest of my afternoon taking calls. I’d answered one earlier from a woman asking how long she needed to listen to her first level, and said that it was nowhere in our literature.
I wrote back that it was approximately 4-6 months, and that we do state it in several places in our literature.
So the first call I take is from her. “Oh, am I glad I got you!” she says. “I got your email, and I’ve just spent the last two or three hours going through all my literature, and I can’t find it anywhere!”
“Well,” I say, “it’s in the liner notes of the CD case, it’s in the introductory materials, it’s in the support letters we send, and it’s in the email my colleague sent you.” (I had learned by then that she had emailed us earlier in the day and had gotten a response from someone else there.)
“But where?!?!”
After speaking with her for a few minutes, I come to realize she’s a bit, well, not fully in a place where she can think clearly. She first tells me that her husband threw out most of the stuff we sent them, then she tells me that she has everything we sent to them….She then went on to say she’d gone over our entire website many, many times and it wasn’t there; nor was it in any of the support letters. And then she said, “And my husband threw away the CD case and information after putting everything on our iPod to listen as an MP3. Nobody keeps those CD cases anyway! So why are you punishing me for throwing away something nobody keeps?”
“I'm certainly not 'punishing' you Cindy, I'm giving you the information you need, but, for whatever reason, you aren't accepting it," I said. "And I need to note something here. Our program isn’t designed to go on an iPod in MP3 or any compressed format.”
“Well,” she said, in a very morally superior tone, “It is if you know what you’re doing!” (Meaning, “You don’t know what you’re talking about, even though you’ve been working with this technology for more four and a half years!”)
I’ll admit, by then my blood was boiling, and it was taking everything in me to keep my tone polite and respectful.
“Perhaps,” I said, “But MP3 formats harm the low carrier tones and keep you from getting full benefit. We don’t recommend listening on anything other than the CDs. I just want to make sure you get the full benefit from them.”
“NOBODY listens to CDs anymore!” she said, tone still superior. “And you can transfer them if you know what you’re doing, MP3 or otherwise. You’re just trying to move away from the real issue here!”
I sat, flummoxed. “Ma’am”, I said politely (when you hear me using “Sir” or “Ma’am” it means they’re on thin ice with me, “I have to admit I’m rather confused on a few points. You’re the first person in the four and a half years and many thousands of emails I’ve done this job that someone has claimed that we do not have this information anywhere; my confusion comes from the fact that we have hundreds of people calling and stating that they’ve been on the program for about four months, asking should they move on? They’ve read the information – and have gotten it from there. My intention is not to single you out, but, again, you’re the first and only person to claim it’s not anywhere. If it’s not anywhere in our literature…then where are the other Participants getting the information?”
She paused, and then said, “It’s not in any of the literature! Where is it? Why are you punishing me for not keeping something nobody keeps?!” (She said this about five times). “Why aren’t you taking responsibility for this? I keep calling and emailing you for this information and I keep forgetting. If you had it in the literature, I wouldn’t have to keep doing this!”
“Cindy,” I said, doing my best to keep my exasperation out of my voice, “Our responsibility is to send you the information, your responsibility is to keep the information we send. We sent it. The timeframes are listed in numerous places. You chose to throw away some important information. How is it our irresponsibility that you decided not to keep it? We’ve also sent it to you in two separate emails, and I’ve told you verbally several times – four to six months.”
“No!” She screamed. By then she was in tears. I hadn’t even raised my voice at that point (nor would I at all.) “You aren’t telling me what I need to know! You’re skirting the issue and you’re refusing to provide me with what I’m asking for! I want to see where you wrote it out! But you’re refusing to tell me! What kind of customer service is this?”
“Ma’am,” I said, “How am I not providing you with customer service? We’ve emailed you the information twice, it’s in the support information, it’s on our website. If you decided to throw out key pieces of information, then there’s not much I can do. I’ve provided you with what you needed – the timeframe for listening – so even if you had nothing we sent you, you now have the information.”
“But I keep forgetting and I keep having to call! If you’d put it in your literature I wouldn't have to keep calling – and I’m telling you I’ve gone over it many, many times, and – ” she took a deep breath and shouted, “…IT…ISN’T…ANYWHERE!!!”
So write it in a Sharpee pen on bathroom mirror! I wanted to say…but didn’t. Tattoo it to your forehead! Put it on a sticky note taped to your iPod! If you keep forgetting the damn information - write it down! How hard is that?!
After enduring this for longer than likely necessary I said, politely, “Cindy, I’m afraid I can’t continue with this conversation. We’re not getting any further. You have the information now.”
“No! I don’t!” she screamed. And then, here’s the part that was the cherry on top: “I’ve seen it in an email, but I need to see it in print!!!”
Me: ....
“Well, you’re welcome to print out the emails we sent and use that for reference.”
“NO! I want to see it in OFFICIAL INFORMATION!”
Exasperated, I said, “This is ‘official’ information because you’re getting it from an ‘official’ Centerpointe employee. I’ve been doing my job for a long time, ma’am, and the information is there. I can’t tell you to go to page 9, paragraph 3 subsection ii, but it’s there. Because we’ve had thousands and thousands of customers get it from the numerous places where we put it. Or they seem satisfied with the information we give over the phone or in a n email. You’re the only person I’ve ever heard state this, Cindy. And so what does that tell you?”
Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t have said that – but I was tired, frustrated and I was stumped as to what was really going on with her, because I know from my job that when someone’s caught on something like that, it’s not about something not being in the literature. It’s something else. But at that point, I couldn’t have cared less. Had she gotten me earlier in the day, I might have tried to coach her.
“But why can’t you?! You just don’t want to help me!!!”
“Because I don’t have all the information right in front of me at the moment. But I can assure you it’s there in several places.” I then told her again I wasn’t going to continue the conversation; she was sobbing at that point and was in such hysterics (she actually said at one point she thought I was lying to her) I could barely understand her. I hadn’t raised my voice, I’d been as nice as I could be (my colleagues who overheard this told me I’d been too nice).
And she hung up.
So I went home, went for a brisk walk around my favorite duck pond, fixed myself dinner and a double martini, growling and grousing and muttering about her.
The next morning, I gathered all the information we send and discovered this:
· It’s in the liner notes that come with the CD (you know, the thing that nobody keeps anymore)
· It’s in the nice pamphlet that discusses how the program works; the pamphlet comes with the level she has
· It’s in the Frequently Asked Questions on our website. In two different places.
· It’s in two places in the email we sent her (a repeat of The Awakening Prologue Instructions)
· It’s in the leaflet we send entitled “The Awakening Prologue Instructions”
· It’s in Support Letter #9
I found it in about a dozen places, all of which she said didn't contain the information. So I sent her two pieces of information (the liner notes and a pamphlet), with the places marked with a pink sticky arrow, and included a very polite letter that pointed out a few other places where she could find it. (I also reiterated why we don’t recommend putting our soundtracks in MP3 format on iPods or other such devices.) I also – politely – mentioned that she needed to keep the information in a safe place.
Why am I still hung up on this and writing about it, two days later? Honestly, I don’t know. Partly because she’s clearly an idiot…but also because I do feel bad for her. She’s clearly not in a healthy mental state, and she’s the kind of person that dearly needs our help.
It reminds me of the email question I got yesterday, “Do you have a CD just for happiness?”
Marc, my boss, said to just let it go, but I did feel kind of bad about how I’d handled it; I honestly didn’t feel like I’d really made much of an effort on my end to help someone who needed help. She was desperate for something, and I could hear it in her voice, but I didn’t have the wherewithal at that point to try to dig into it. She was a person who was hurting and was frustrated, and so I felt it was my duty to follow up with her and provide her with “official” information. I still feel like I could have done more…and I guess that’s what’s eating at me.
There was more going on with her, and I didn’t follow up on that, even though my intuition was telling me to do so. So I came away feeling irritated to no end by her…but upset with myself for not listening to my intuition that she needed something more and different, and that I was blaming her for how angry I was.
We all miss things that are right under our noses. It happens all the time. I guess I was just caught at a fragile time as I was tired and I (thought I) didn’t care. Granted, I work with the loopier end of human consciousness and it takes its toll sometimes, but I was feeling challenged and dismissed…just as she likely was. I know I’m human, and I know I can only do my best, but the odd thing is – at the time I knew I wasn’t. One of my pet peeves is when people call us for help or information, and then argue with me or shoot it down time and time again. I let that get in the way of helping someone who needed to be heard or helped on a level beyond what they thought they needed. It's my job to hear beyond the words and the question, but I completely ignored that.
Writing this just now, I realize now that’s why she went away frustrated, as did I: she was (unconsciously) asking for help for something else beneath the surface of the information she wanted, and I didn’t even try to give it to her. I knew that at the time, and that “little voice” as Magnum P.I. always called it, was nearly screaming in my head to push beyond it and find out what was really going on…and I ignored it.
For that I’m truly sorry. She was in emotional overwhelm and was blaming the literature (and me) for it. And she wasn’t getting the information she needed…which was why my simply telling her “four to six” months wasn’t satisfying her. I turned it into a pissing match of sorts, and took it personally. It's bound to happen sometimes, yes, but when I have that "little voice" screaming in my head...I really need to learn to fully listen to it. I usually do, but on Thursday it was just too hard for whatever reason.
She was asking for a glass of water, thinking she was thirsty, but really, she needed a hug. She was thirsty, yes, but not for what she thought she needed. And I knew it…but I ignored it.
Kind of a sappy metaphor, but it’s the best I can come up with.
I guess that’s why I’m writing about this today…I just needed to air it out and sort through what was going on. I’ll use it as a lesson to listen to my “little voice” better next time…that voice is never wrong I’ve found, and yet – I still think I know better. And when I do, I realize…I don’t.
Hopefully Cindy will call back and not let that one call overshadow what we can give her. If she never speaks to me again, I’m fine with that; but we have 8 other really terrific coaches that she can certainly work with.
So thank you, readers, for letting me bounce all of that off of you and for lending me your “cyberears”.
Hopefully it won’t be so long before I “rock and roll” again.
I've added new photos to my photo link, so check that out.
