That's pretty much customer service 101 / consulting ABCs. Sometimes you have to learn it through experience if it doesn't come natural to you, but I think it c

That's pretty much customer service 101 / consulting ABCs. Sometimes you have to learn it through experience if it doesn't come natural to you, but I think it can be learned, taught, and coached. The more nuanced, hard part is to be able to effectively read (over a phone even) whether your customer is the type that has been burned by charlatans in the past and wants technical excellence first... or whether they would prefer "bedside manner" moreso (this is an area that a lot of doctors also fail routinely). Some people are extremely hard to read, and it gets more difficult the higher up a corporate hierarchy you go and for more lucrative verticals in my experience - they're all used to very strong poker faces. But few high level business decisions are made purely upon raw information, so understanding emotion becomes very important if your business focuses upon fewer customers with greater $ / customer. All too often people fail to read the emotions behind what someone wants and tries to execute to the details of the request instead of looking for context first before touching a keyboard. I worked with a good engineer that diligently worked on problems reliably, and my customer had an issue that they really just didn't care about that much but only wanted to just send out the door for the sake of finishing it and marking it done (it's turning into shelfware, but there's... obligations / due dilligence). I had a hard time communicating that over the phone with the customer present and the customer was getting frustrated (visible but not audible) but another senior engineer figured out between the lines what I was implying between my words, drastically reduced effort on the problem being worked, and the customer was happier for it.