#perspective #getsome

An email alert flashed across my screen and the subject line was 'Your Water Bill is Here!'.  Outside of the improper use of an explanation point for such a mundane email, I opened it to find that the bill was about fives times the typical amount. So of course I dropped everything and launched a full scale investigation. In doing some quick math, I determined that this bill indicated I had used 41,000 gallons of water in a two month period. That is a lot of water. And since any well run investigation includes myriad of statistics, the average adult in the United States uses about 50 gallons of water per day, and this bill indicated I used about 680 gallons per day during this billing period.

I called customer service and was connected with a rep who was actually very willing to talk with me about my scenario (and my newly launched investigation). We talked a bit about possible causes and ruled those out.  And then the conversation seemingly came to a close with her comment of "well, that means you used all of that water." I tried to talk through how difficult it would be to use they much water (I even tossed in in my statistic), but she was clear that there were two or three common issues, otherwise it means I used the water indicated.
 I hung up thanking her for her time and frustrated that I made basically no progress.

I thought about why, and it hit me... she didn’t have perspective for the situation. Now I am not saying that I was right or she wasn't willing to help, but she was operating from a set list of checks that either were true or false and there was a default answer if none were true.

It is important to ensure you have perspective on the scenario at hand, and not fall back to quickly to a default answer set that may or may not apply. It may take more time and/or cost more, but the helpfulness of your service will increase, as will your client’s satisfaction.

What will you do to ensure you gain perspective?

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