Part 1: Read the case study before you answer the following questions
“One morning many years ago, an angry customer burst into the office of Julian F. Detmer, the founder of the Len Detmer Company, which later became a wool distributor for the entire US garment industry. Mr. Detmer narrated: “This customer owed us a small amount. After receiving some reminder letters, he immediately came to Chicago and stormed my office to tell me that he would not pay the bill and would never buy any of my company’s merchandise either in the future. I listened patiently. Actually, there were times when I wanted to interrupt him, but I kept my mouth shut because I understood that it would not be nice to do so. I just let him boil down all his anger. Finally, when he calmed down, I said, “Thank you so much for coming all the way here and letting me know about this. You helped me out with a great deal because if our accounting department let this happen to you, it could be the same with other customers. That’s too bad. Believe me, if you are eager to express this, I am even more eager to hear”. Obviously, he hadn’t expected me to say that. I could even notice that he was a bit disappointed because he came to Chicago from far to express his anger, but in return, I thanked him without arguing with him. I assured him that we would review and cancel the amount. I also added that because my staff had to calculate thousands of different books, it’s likely that they may make more mistakes than him. I even said I understood his feelings very well and if I had been in his position, I would have definitely done the same. And since he said that he would no konger buy from us, I introduced him to some other reliable wool sellers in the area so that he could work with. In the past we had used to have lunch together every time he came to Chicago, so after that incidence, I contimucd to invite him to lunch again. He accepted reluctantly. However, an unexpected thing happened after that, he placed an order which was even bigger than any previous orders. Also, after returning home, wanting to show us the same goodwill that we had demonstrated towards him, he checked his sales receipts again and found out missing one, he immediately sent the unpaid amount by check with apologies. Later, when his wife gave birth to a son, he named his son Detmer. He remained a friend of mine and a client of my company until he died twenty-two years later.”
(Excerpt from “How to win friends and influence people”, page 131, Dale Carnegie).
Answer all questions as below:
1) List the non-verbal communication skills used by the author, in this case, to deal with his angry customer.
2) What results did these professional behaviors produce?
3) Explain why and how these skills brought about huge short-term and long-term results for the company as well as for the friendship between the author and his customer.
Part 2: Write a “thank you” email after you received food vouchers and film tickets from your manager after you achieved the best performance prize of this year.
