Knowing when to let go

January 16, 2013

Relationships as well as friendships are much like marriages; it’s important to know when to let go. It can happen at either end. We all have a choice as to whether we wish to continue to be part of any relationship and either party can decide the time is up. The degree of anguish, hurt, or relief is a matter of which end of things one is on.
friendLe’s take an example. Suppose you’ve been in a very long friendship, say one that has endured for 25 or 30 years. You and your friend have exchanged visits, holiday cards, gone on trips together and talked about each other’s families for all those years. And then one day you begin to have trouble reaching this friend. At first, you figure he/she is just busy. After all, you’ve been friends for so many years and you didn’t have any arguments, what else could it be? So you begin to figure out what the other person is doing that would keep them from responding to you. Perhaps one of their children has been ill, or maybe they’ve been dealing with life issues that they don’t want to bother you with. This begins the excuse stage.

Next comes the worry stage. This is where you really start to wonder why your long-time friend isn’t returning your phone calls and/or emails. You begin to go over the last conversation you had examining how it went. Could there have been some clue that you missed? Why doesn’t he/she get back to you? Is something going on that you haven’t figured out yet?

Then there is the irritation stage. What have I done to deserve this behavior? So you try again. With one last attempt to be nice and give the other person the benefit of the doubt, you write an email, “I know how busy you must have been since I think one of your children is due to be married….”. A few weeks later, a response comes with no salutation, just the news that indeed the daughter or son or whomever did get married, but it happened months before (so guess what? You weren’t invited and I’m only telling you now to get you off my back…. Words in parenthesis are unspoken but implied). Wow. Now you know. It’s final. The relationship no longer has meaning. If your words of congratulations had meaning, then the news would have been provided more timely. People send invitations even to those they know can’t come just to “include” them. At a minimum, they send a notice. Not to receive anything is certainly a realization that one is less than an acquaintance. How did this happen?

When one begins the process of re-evaluation of the relationship, the whole thing begins to unravel. Was it ever a friendship or just a matter of convenience? No response is necessary. No other phone calls will ever be made or answered. It’s done. The realization is complete that the relationship is over. All that is left is to accept that a life-long friend may have been a mirage.

Talk about a life lesson. How can one discern friendship? Perhaps it was there for a while. Perhaps it wasn’t. All we can do is live with it and hope that our new friends are more worthy of our time and attention.

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Posted by intuitivelifecoachjoanne

How to Drive Customers Away

May 30, 2012

Anyone who has ever been in a sales, service business or even had client customers knows the importance of “customer service”. So why is it so hard to find quality service when interacting with people representing a company these days? Here are some possible reasons:

People are underpaid. They don’t get paid enough to deal with the issues at hand, so when they get irritated by the already irate customer, this individual hangs up. Nice way to handle the problem, right? Of course, wrong. But it’s happened a lot to me lately. This type of behavior only infuriates me more since I have to call in again only to wait in queue.

People just don’t care. They are underutilized in the job they are in. Perhaps their real profession was a higher skilled one and they are doing customer service merely to pay the bills. Their heart isn’t into it. Another version of this comes from improperly trained people. The result is that the customer gets treated poorly.

People aren’t skilled enough for the job. When I recently bought a new computer, I had to deal with a myriad of technicians who were supposed to know more than I did (should have been really easy with my level of computer savvy) only to find that they couldn’t help me solve the issues at hand. Mind you, it was a brand new computer so it should not have had so many issues. That’s another side of the problem. For now we are looking at the issue of trying to get service. I called and called only to find the person I was talking to had no clue about the particular software problem that the company I had bought it from (third party sale) sent me. I finally had to send the software back and use manual transfer of my data from my old system to the new one after I got hold of one technician who knew what he was doing. I was on-line with this guy from 9:30 pm until 3AM. It took that long to set up a new computer that I was told wouldn’t be a problem. Again, not the real issue here, but a tag along one. Sales over sells and service has to take the ball from there. I guess service is thrown some curve balls, but people should be properly trained. I also want to add that I had paid for upgraded priority service for three years on both hardware and software.

The company’s operational rules and policies are broken. I’ve just completed a 10-year line of credit with one of the huge banking/mortgage firms. After 8 of the 10 years on the program, I decided to actually use it to buy a heating and a/c system rather than take money from my investments due to the large sticker price. After all, the whole idea of the line of credit is so that the payments can be made over time, the interest rate is very low (3.25%) and the interest is tax- deductible as part of my mortgage. That’s the concept anyway. I barely got started with the loan only to find out that I had to pay the full money back within two years since the LOC was ending. Ok, so I had to make large payments which I figured I could do over my bank’s bill pay system. I was surprised to find that these ACH payments were converted to physical checks (part of this company’s policy requirements) and went into the mail. By the time the company actually got my $14,000 payment now in the form of a check, 6 weeks had gone by, I was nearly crazy making phone calls trying to track it down and I learned a lot about where the money could go along the way. I learned much more than I should have ever had to deal with. Every person I worked with gave me a run around until I finally drove over to a local branch and spoke to the branch manager who promptly helped me. After that, I physically went to the branch and made transactions. In this age of automation how bad can a system be that I can’t go online and make payments with full confidence. Just today I tried to resolve an issue with the final balance on this line of credit and again they drove me crazy until after the fourth try I got a woman who resolved my issue right away.

So in the end, if the first person doesn’t help you, hang up and call back. Eventually, you’ll get someone who knows what they are doing, is responsible, and actually cares. There are some good customer service people around. But you have to look hard to find them. Make a list and share it when you do.

 

3 Comments | inspirational stories, manners and behavior, personal development, Spirituality | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by intuitivelifecoachjoanne