Worldly Wisdom Wednesday – There’s No Such Thing as Instant Gratification
Posted By Randy on January 16, 2013
Effective communication requires patience, both in formulating and conveying your own thoughts, and in receiving those of others. We live in the so called “information age”, and yet too many people are so busy thinking about what they’re going to do next that they are never actually in the moment that’s happening now. They ignore the people who are present to communicate with those who are absent. Where once people wrote carefully crafted letters that travelled to their destinations by horse, ship, and postman, taking months to arrive, the norm has become to expect an instant response, and damned be he who fails to provide it!
For example, a few weeks ago I was on the phone to a client when another call rang in. Because I was engaged, it went to voice mail, which I was free to listen to less than 2 minutes later. The message was from a man seeking to employ our security services, and in it he said he was calling because he had asked around and heard we were “… the best”. No more than 4 minutes after his call was made, I returned it and heard him say, “Thanks, but when you didn’t call me back I called someone else.”
On another occasion, an Ontario couple, with a seasonal residence here in Nova Scotia that they normally occupy during the summer, called us to arrange a meeting at their property. We were busy in the morning of the day they wanted, and so I suggested we drop by in the afternoon. Their response was that they would be in “all afternoon” that day, so they would be happy if we would drop by “any time”.
We arrived at about 2:45 PM to find the house locked up, no car in the driveway, and a note taped to the door that read, “When you didn’t show up by 2:30 we figured you weren’t coming so we’ve gone out for the rest of the day.”.
At least once a year I’ll get a call on my cel phone from an exasperated client who begins the conversation with, “You are a hard man to reach!” When this happens, I hear those words on the first call I have received from that person. Returning to my office after one of these calls, I usually find that they called my main land line, left a voice message requesting a call back, and then redialed the same number 10 to 12 times in rapid succession. Only after that do they call my cel phone, get an answer on the second ring, and proclaim me hard to reach.
We see parallels to these impediments to communication in our consultations with some of the people who call us to help them resolve problems in the relationships they have with their Dogs. Most of our clients are open to following a patient, empathic, and Natural approach, but an annoying percentage don’t want to build a relationship. They want command and control, and the faster the better. Some can see no reason why they should have to actually play a role in training their Dog, calling us in on the presumption that they’re paying us to “fix” it for them, as though it and the root cause of the issue were something akin to a dented fender. Scissors sharpened while you wait!
It’s interesting how technology and both the drive for, and acceptance of, faster results go hand in hand. Sadly, this leads to even transient and ill conceived “solutions” to problems being found acceptable because with everything done at speed, everything is transient. Just because a problem seems to have gone away doesn’t mean it has.
Remember that Nature keeps time much differently than the frantic, driven, delusional Human. While Man observes transience in the blink of an eye and craves for it to move faster, Nature too is in transition on Her own terms. Always changing, but at a rate that is in keeping with the rate of change of all things, and in this may appear to be permanent. A Natural cycle that runs its course over centuries before waning only to reappear after many Human lifetimes; many many Dog lifetimes; even more Mouse lifetimes; may, while it holds sway, be thought permanent by those who experience it. In its passing it may be forgotten; its resurgence treated as unprecedented. Even frightening.
Patience is at one with the Way of the Wild, as is knowing when to make haste. Be synchronized with the moment you are in.
I'll admit I HATE waiting, but because I normally make people wait. I feel guilty when I won't wait for reply. Is there a saying something like, "Any thing worth having is worth waiting for"?
As for you business, you could give times like Eastlink, Some time between 8am and 5pm. no later then 7pm…. o_O You being 15 minutes late for an appointment would be well welcomes from me, After waiting on people like Bell Canada to send me a return label for my receiver… I've been waiting 6 months, and have called them 5 or more times.
Actually, I wasn't 15 minutes late for anything. The client had stated that they were going to be home "all afternoon" so pinning down a time wasn't necessary as long as we came IN the afternoon. We arrived in the MIDDLE of the afternoon to find that they had gone, apparently because in their part of Ontario, afternoon ends at 2:30 PM. Night time comes early to them.
IMO can't get much more in the afternoon then 2:45.
Hm – interesting. I certainly cannot relate to that. In my world, almost everyone who contacts me is pleasantly surprised when I return the call/email the same day – based on their experience with some other trainers who don’t respond in days or not at all, they didn’t expect to hear from me promptly.
I wonder if it has to do with the security aspect of your business. Perhaps people feel that if they don’t get a hold of you right away when it’s not so important, they also won’t when it does matter.
I felt similarly when I contacted a house/car insurance company a few years ago to get a quote, and they didn’t bother returning my call, and I wondered if they are slacking when I want to give them money, what will they do if I have a claim and they need to pay me some.
Not at all critical of you – your response time is better than what mine would be.
Silvia, we too respond promptly to calls and messages. After 30 years in the business of solving the problems of other people, I now have short patience with the red flag represented by those who come to us with unrealistic expectations.
The point about a client relating response time to a first contact with how things might be going forward is a good one, and I deal with it like this. I come at this with a long background in the fields of risk assessment and emergency management/response. I have 17 years of experience in police and fire communications. I am trained to function as an incident commander. All that being said, I am also a business man, and I have always believed that the most important asset any business has is the clients it HAS, not the ones it may COME to have.
This means that more effort must be expended every day in seeing to the needs of people who have already joined the “club” than to those who are kicking the tires. I tell people up front what kind of lead time they’ll be looking at – sometimes short, at other times long. depending on the nature of their issue, where they’re located, legal issues, personal risk, project complexity, time of the year, if one or both of us has the flu, and let’s not forget the client’s demonstrated ability to pay (always near and dear to my black mercenary heart) – lots of logistical factors and impinging considerations.
In addition, taking on more than one client from a list of those who have called at any one time will also be affected by triage. Someone with an urgent need will be bumped ahead of those who have decided to have a routine matter handled. For example, a nursing home with a malfunctioning fire alarm system will see us pretty much immediately, ahead of someone who wants a survey and recommendation for a residential security system, and that last person may have their consultation rescheduled in favour of the greater need. If they can’t swallow that, then they really need to go to the second best guy down the road, and do it with our blessing.
Have I mentioned that I’m the diplomat in the organization? The clients love Diana, but the testy ones are lucky it’s me who deals with them, and not her. Holy shit, but I do LOVE European women.
Sounds like a weak attempt at control–a wide, wild, angry unfocused punch thrown at the current target of their frustration. Such a punch can only harm themselves. “You weren’t there to answer my call, so I will show you that I can take business away from you”. I know you are in Canada, but a friend of mine uses the phrase “The Pussification of America”, meaning that we are producing a bunch of spoiled babies.
Weak attempt indeed Gary, and the wild, angry punch analogy is well applied. Too often, the customer forgets that they are taking away something I never had, and depending on their behaviour, may have declined. It’s a liberating experience for a business the first time they fire a client, and we generally fire at least one a year, for a variety of reasons. My mother used to say that there are people for whom you could cut your own throat on their behalf, and they’d still say you didn’t do it right.
I’ll relate an anecdote to illustrate how a client can get their ass kicked to the curb hereabouts. About 20 years ago I went to meet with a middle aged woman who lived back a long rural dirt road. She had a variety of medical issues and had just been released from hospital with instructions to obtain a personal emergency reporting system – a small portable panic button to press in case of emergency.
It was spring and there was mud everywhere. Her husband owned and operated an auto salvage yard right next to the house, and as I parked and got out of my car I observed a large German Shepherd Dog running toward me. He jumped around me in a very friendly way, so I engaged him for a while before letting him escort me to the house.
Once inside, the woman apologized if the Dog had gotten mud on my – he hadn’t, at least not much – and she told me he wasn’t very smart. In the next few minutes sitting at her kitchen table I learned that her husband had gotten the Dog to guard his junk yard from thieves, and that he had gotten him as a puppy the previous winter. The woman alleged to be allergic to Dogs, and true or not she obviously didn’t like them.
I asked her why she said the Dog wasn’t very smart and heard how, in the depths of the previous winter, she routinely found the puppy shivering outside the door of the house instead of sleeping in the insulated house her husband had built for him.
I picked up the business card I had given her from where it lay on the table, got up to leave, and told her to call someone else because aside from the Dog, there was nothing living on the property that I would lift a finger to save from anything.