We had a client a few days ago receive a huge bill from the phone company. The phone bill stated that our client owed them for a cancellation of their DSL (read Internet) connection. The client called us and asked for our help.
When I called the telephone company and over the course of about an hour I was directed to the Internet services department, their accounts department, to a call supervisor and then to the supervisor's supervisor. In each case I could have chosen to be forceful, angry or rude in my tone. But I have learned over the years that these tact's usually aren't effective. I chose, instead, to take the overly polite "I really need your help" tone. Indeed they really were helping me and my sincere approach paid off. I was able to save our client, a non-profit association with a limited budget, about $1,000. All it really took was patience and politeness.
Mother's teach us to be polite. As I said in the title, sometimes it pays to be really nice to 'Peggy.'
Page.
