I recently signed up for new tech.

Surprise, surprise. (It’s common these days!)

This is something I have been needing for my business for awhile, but in this particular moment, a lot of other people are also looking for tech solutions.

Thus, the employees are working extra hard, and if the company wasn’t already remote, the employees are probably learning to work from home.

My first interaction with this company was a demo call. The employee called me late, the presentation wasn’t amazing, and then he didn’t follow up with an email like he said he would.

I didn’t sign up immediately because it was more expensive than I had anticipated and because I wasn’t particularly impressed with the customer service.

But…they have a solution that I really want, and it looks like they have put together a package that is better than I can get anywhere else (in other words, I think their company has more of what I want than the similar solutions).

I called back asking to sign on for a month to try it out. I thought it was worth giving them another try – maybe it was just that one employee who I wasn’t too impressed with.

The second employee had a screaming child in the background. However, he took the time to explain a) that they have been really, really busy with people signing on given the Coronavirus, and b) that they usually work in an office but now they are working from home, and hence the crying baby and other things he is dealing with while still serving me the best he can.

This moment of honesty sat much better with me and the first caller. I imagine all of these things were true for the first caller, but he didn’t take the time to explain them to me. Possibly he thought that it would seem unprofessional to share this kind of ‘back end’ information. In reality, that share, in this situation, would create greater empathy (on my part, for his lateness and less presence), and build greater connection.

How can we apply this in our day to day interactions with others? When is vulnerability an appropriate way to connect?