Here we are with Part 3 of the Dentist Diaries. Hopefully this series has given you something to “sink your teeth into” with customer service. This month, I am just picking up where I left off in the last issue and I want to share some thoughts on pain. The following is one of the very interesting definitions I found for “pain”:
“Pain is an unpleasant feeling that is conveyed to the brain by sensory neurons. The discomfort signals actual or potential injury to the body.
“However, pain is more than a sensation, or the physical awareness of pain. It also includes perception, the subjective interpretation of the discomfort.
“Perception gives information on the pain’s location, intensity and something about its nature. The various conscious and unconscious responses to both sensation and perception, including the emotional response, add further definition to the overall concept of pain.”
No. 8—The perception of pain, its location and nature. Seven days after the initial procedure, the dentist discovered and packed the dry socket. I was relieved—maybe now the pain could now stop, but it didn’t.
The dentist assumed he knew the location and nature of my pain when I was back in the dreaded dentist chair five days later. Even though it was my pain and my mount, I couldn’t really tell the exact location of the pain. I just knew that the entire left side of my jaw was throbbing.
The dentist assumed after he sat me down, I had not followed his instructions and it was that neglect causing this pain. I received a five-minute “lecture” on the care of a dry socket, before his examination revealed that there was a splinter of bone protruding from the surgery site. This had obviously splintered in the initial operation and would now need removal. He had perceived he knew the location and nature of my pain without a thorough investigation. He was wrong.
We can do the same thing in the mortgage business. My team works with many clients with challenged credit. We assist them by giving them a plan for rebuilding and/or repairing their credit, and then following up. One particular client we had been worked with for almost two years recently signed a contract on a home. Her dream of owning a home would finally be coming true. But there were some challenges. There was much extra documentation required and some consequences to deal with because of her failure to follow all of our instructions on past credit issues.
She was in much pain during this process and she let us know about it. We assumed that this pain was due to her misconception of how the mortgage process would flow. We assumed she had thought the only pain would be in the credit repair, not in the actually loan process. We assumed her irritation and aggravation with us was a response to our requests for additional information and documentation.
Her Realtor assumed we must be inflicting cruel and unusual punishment to this client and told us as much. We were all wrong.
One visit with this client as the closing date drew near revealed the true source of her pain. We had, at the client and her husband’s request, focused solely on the repair of her credit. Accordingly, she would be the sole mortgagor on the loan. I sat down and listened to her rant, prepared to explain to her that “it is was it is” and the process is tougher now, and guidelines are tight and we were doing the best we could, but we must have that documentation.
She was military, dressed in fatigues, bouncing a toddler on her knee that she had just picked up from daycare, and she was mad. As she ranted about her husband, his credit, his propensity to spend too much and save too little, of his unwillingness in the past two years to join with her on this quest for home ownership, a light came on in my head. None of this was really about the mortgage process or us.
She was in an emotional whirlwind, mad and nervous and sad and aggravated at her husband. She was feeling as if the all the burden and responsibility of purchasing the home for their family and dealing with the details was on her shoulders.
She felt he hadn’t “manned up” as he should have. (Her words, not mine!) Her disappointments and personal challenges had spilled over into this mortgage process. Now it was hard for her to tell where the pain was coming from. But her pain was real.
We really heard more than we needed to hear in this rant on her life and her husband. But we did discover one thing—the true source and the nature of her pain. It was an “ah ha” moment for both my processor and me. My processor finally leaned forward on the desk, looked the client square in the eye and said, “This is really about your husband, isn’t it?” The client dropped her head and nodded.
We are not marriage counselors, nor do we want to be. But understanding and having empathy for the pain of a client—no matter what the source of that pain is, even personal—is crucial to building client appreciation and loyalty.
We felt it wise to make no comments on the attributes of her husband. But we did applaud her on the diligence, discipline, and determination she had exhibited for the past two years to pay off old debts and save money for her down payment. Now it would pay off and she could purchase that home for her family. And I believe we now have a loyal client and a raving fan.
Location, location, location—sometimes, we just need to stop assuming and discover the location of the pain.
Louise Thaxton is a producing branch manager for Fairway Independent Mortgage Corp., with satellite offices across Louisiana. She co-authored her first book with Stephen Covey and Patricia Fripp, “Success Simplified,” which is scheduled to be released later this year. Subscribe to her blog at
