What would you do in this situation? (ToM)

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An important customer has a request your company cannot fulfill. You know that your boss expects, as part of your responsibilities, that you do your utmost to fulfill a customer's request and never say "NO", so you explain to the customer that the company is not able to fulfill that request, but that the company will try everything in their power to help and will get back with results if any achieved. The customer then tells your boss that he's angry because you refused to fulfill this request for him. Your boss asks you: "What happened?"

What do you do?

Explain that said customer jumped to a conclusion because I said we would try to fulfill their request, even though we normally wouldn't be able to.

Explain the truth reasonably and logically to your boss. Explain WHY it can't be done in the time the customer wants it done and then try to offer a solution to make it possible. If you need more staff to assist you, tell your boss that. I have found that by being up front and professional, most of the people I have had over me have been willing to work with me. The thing is, you will have to be somewhat assertive and that takes some of practice if you are not used to it. It took me years to be able to do it, but it all started with a first step when I realized I could no longer take the weight of everyone's problems on my shoulders and so I started pushing back in as nice a way as I could. Then I learned how to do it in a not so nice way when the need arose (this is rare).

I did a little thinking and this is how I would have approached this situation. When the customer spoke with you, I would not have refused the request. Instead, I would have told them that you have to consult your boss to see if the timeline could be met. After that, I would have approached my boss and said something like this:" Mr/Mrs (insert name here), do you have a moment? Client X just called me and asked me to (insert request here). Unfortunately, I do not think I can do this on my own in the time frame they want. How should we solve this problem?" This way, your boss is on board from the beginning. Using the word "we" emphasizes that it is a shared responsibility to make the client happy and that you wish to do so. It is mildly assertive and most people do appreciate that. Plus, now if the request can't be filled, your boss is in the loop and better able to cope with the issue before it reaches his desk from the client.

Last edited by outofplace on 11 Jul 2012, 4:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Say that you didn't refuse, you said you would try but explained that it would be very unlikely that you would succeed.

I explain the situation to him about what the customer wanted and what I told him.

Are you NT? I ask because you're the only one so far who applied ToM... I know that I'll be in trouble with my boss because of my lack of ToM, but I can't for the life of me apply ToM. I just don't have it.

Tell them exactly what happened. Don't lie. You did your job well like you were supposed to, you didn't do anything wrong.

The catch here is that when the boss asks "What happened?", he's not asking for the story. We aspies take his question literally, and respond by telling the story, also literally. I don't have a clue what he means by "What happened?" but he's not asking for the story, that much I've learnt.

Count me in the group that would have responded by telling the story. I would have used the words you used above "I explained to the customer that the company is not able to fulfill that request, but that the company will try everything in their power to help and will get back with results if any achieved."

I have no idea what response someone would be looking for if they don't want to know what happened. Very odd.

I had a variation on this exact scenario.

Q: The most important customer to the company requested something, the boss told them it would be provided and to contact me. The boss then told me not to do it, then scarpers. The most important customer is phoning me every hour to ask where it is, what do I do?

A: Experience my first panic attacks.

I'm still feeling the consequences of this 12 years later. Once you've experienced a panic attack and extreme anxiety, there's no going back to how you were before that.

Jason.

There was no ToM applied. I have HFA and extremely low empathy, and horrible ToM skills. It doesn't take ToM skills to answer your question - on top of that, others in this thread have given similar answers to mine, with different wording.

Here was my thought process to answer your question:

I told the customer one thing > my boss says the customer told him that I said another > this creates an equation: here's what should have happened "what i said to customer = what customer said to boss" but that was not the case, so something went wrong with the customer. I didn't say no, but the customer said I said no, therefore the customer is either lying, or did not understand me, otherwise they would have said the same thing to my boss as I said to them.

It's less theory of mind and more my experience with NTs always assuming things about what I say - jumping to conclusions. It's learned, not instinctual. I also have a degree in language (German, but I also speak 4 languages and have taken many linguistics classes. Language was also a special interest of mine), meaning I'm used to seeking flaws in people's understanding of my statements.

So in the statement I said to the customer, I said "we usually can't, but we'll try". So, what is the nearest statement to mine, that would be equivalent to me saying no? That statement would be "we can't." Therefore the customer thought I said "we can't" as far as meaning is concerned, as long as they have fluency in the language we're speaking - they acted as if I said "we can't", it's impossible to know what they thought. I'm not good at ToM, I'm good with language (even though I had language delays and still go mute sometimes). Find some non-language based ToM questions and I'll probably do horribly.

Furthermore, what I would actually say to my boss would be that I didn't say no, and I would give a description of what I said to the customer, saying that they must have jumped to a conclusion or misunderstood me. My statement that you quoted is simply a summed-up version of that conversation.

In the real world I have horrible ToM skills. For example, I cannot understand why -everybody- cannot play music like I can. All the concepts came to me so easily, but everyone around me seems to have much difficulty understanding it all and putting it into practice. But it makes no sense to me. It's so simple and easy, logical, it should be apparent to everyone.

I also have absolute pitch, and for many years I thought -everybody- heard sound that way - as if each pitch is as unique as shades of color are.

I mean no offense, but I think your question might not be a good question to tell if someone has good ToM skills - because I have a binder full of papers from my doctors saying I have horrible ToM skills and extremely low empathy. And so far everyone has answered in a way that is, in essence, identical to mine "I said one thing, the customer said another"/"what I said is not what the customer told you" etc.

Just tell the story like you told us. I'm sure that's what your boss wants to hear.

The boss already heard what happened, from the customer.

If any post in this thread demonstrates ToM, it is this one. All of us, myself included, assumed you were posing a hypothetical (which would be taking the literal understanding of what you said), until this person, who made assumptions on what you said - the assumption that you're asking us this question because that thing happened to you. There's also the last part "I'm sure that's what your boss wants to hear" which, arguably, demonstrates this poster putting themselves in your boss' shoes, trying to think of what would please them.

Not trying to be a smart ass but, if you know the company can't fulfill the order but you said the company will try why wouldn't you mention this to your boss before the customer did?

I agree with this..

"Let me check into this for you and get back to you." would have prevented this.

I have a lot of leeway and decision making responsibility in my job, but if I'm about to blow off someone important, I'll always talk it through with someone first. There is almost always a different way to respond or even fulfill what seems like an impossible request.

Jason.