CHAPTER 6

Powerful ProblemSolving: Beyond“Yes We Can” and“No We Can’t”

EVERY CRISIS HAS ITS ROOTS in an unsolved problem. Thus far in this book, we have focused on ways to help a difficult customer feel heard and understood. But that is not enough. At some point, the discussion must shift to the heavy lifting of solving the customer’s problem.

When customers confront us, our natural instinct is often to respond with our agenda, which in turn leads them to push back with their agenda. Or we may desperately throw out solutions and hope they will accept them. Sometimes this approach works, but often it leads to frayed tempers and escalating demands.

In this chapter, we outline a better way: a systematic, four-step approach for problem solving that ...

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