Several weeks ago my Site Supervisor received a phone call from a customer, who complained about the way how I handled one of his calls during the shift. The Supervisor left a message to my Shift Leader, who had a conversation with me after that.
My Shift Leader asked me to explain what exactly happened between me and the customer during the call. So I started explaining him the whole situation from my own perception. However, before I finished explaining, the Leader blew up with quite severe emotions. As a result of the Leader’s reaction I had to take a defensive position in this conversation. The Leader raised his voice so much, that it turned into screaming. You could tell for sure that he was totally frustrated by looking at his facial expressions, high voice, body language, emotions and words, which he used to express his opinion (Turner 2012). Although the Leader was actively demonstrating his position in the conflict, I was also involved in defensive listening of his arguments and tried to deliver my opinion to him (Turner 2012). It seemed that he was not listening to me at all and that made me blow up in return. His actions demonstrated that he was ignoring my opinion, while trying to persuade me that it was my fault that caused client’s dissatisfaction with the service. His behavior caused a chain reaction to my actions. I demonstrated several vocal transitions, facial expressions, different types of defensive body orientation and, probably, a few turn gestures. I am not sure if a “turn gesture” is the correct term for what I replied to him but I do know it was a gesture.
After several hours passed, we still could not even look at each other. Eventually, he calmed down and came to speak to me. Notwithstanding I was not calm, I did listen to him. He apologized for his reaction to the situation and asked to explain once more what happened over the phone with the client. I agreed to explain once more, though first asked him, “Are you going to listen to me this time?”
I told him the whole conversation as I remembered it and what I did to fix the problem. When I finally figured out what the problem was with customer’s complaint, I knew for sure that it was another company that had to fix this issue. I provided the customer with a contact name and phone number, so that he could ask them to fix the problem. Unfortunately, what has led to misunderstanding with the client is that he kept insisting it was our company who should deal with the issue now and I was insisting that he needed to call the other company and clarify all the questions.
After the Leader allowed me to explain what happened without me or him going too explosive upon the matter, he understood me better and then informed the Site Supervisor what had happened. Consequently, the Site Supervisor investigated some things about this issue and confirmed that it was me, in fact, who was correct. He expressed his gratitude regarding the situation resolution. After the problem was fixed my Shift Leader came to talk to me about how I tried to troubleshoot the problem myself. He assured me that what I did was correct indeed but of course some of my actions needed improvements. I exercised active listening, receiving and understanding so that I will be able to understand him better next time something similar happens again (Turner 2012).
Works Cited
Turner, H. Lynn; West, Richard. Internal Personnel Communications. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2012: 100-152. Print.
