I worked as international sales for a while. I had to make a lot of phone calls and take a lot of phone calls often from all over the world with less than ideal

I worked as international sales for a while. I had to make a lot of phone calls and take a lot of phone calls often from all over the world with less than ideal sound quality and drastically different accents. When an angry customer called me to complain about shipment, product or what not, due to aforementioned difficulties associated with intl calls, I had to first make sure I understand what they were saying. I try my best to put together what the situation was and repeat back to them in my own words for them to confirm. I kid you not, angry customers always get much less angry once they realized that I understand their situation. The emotional change resulted from being merely understood was so amazing and the interaction was always precious to me like I made a new friend.