“Visitor”, “Complainant”, “Customer” revisited – review

“People are hard if not impossible to change. Relationships are almost as hard to change. Conversations, on the other hand, are relatively easy to change, especially if one is aware of the roles each participant is taking and is skillful at inviting changes in those roles” – Phillip B. Ziegler

In a short paper which appears in Doing Something Different: Solution-Focused Brief Therapy Practices (Thorana S. Nelson, ed), Phillip B. Ziegler contributes a simple yet  key distinction that might be very useful to Solution-Focused practitioners.

Traditionally, SF practitioners are taught that clients can be in a visitor, complainant or customer relationship vis-a-vis therapy/ coaching.

Someone who is in a visitor relationship might be a mandated client, somebody who shows up because someone else (the justice system, the spouse, family or, in coaching, management) told him or her to.

Clients who are in a complainant relationship with the SF practitioner are not yet ready to work towards a solution, they first need to voice their concerns and they need to feel validated.

Clients who are in a customer relationship are ready and willing to work towards their goals and to take responsibility for it.

During SF training, a great deal of emphasis is given to the fact that these terms are to be used to characterize the relationship, and not the client – we want to avoid to label the client.

However, as the author of the paper points out: “a visitor is someone who is visiting, a complainant is a person who is complaining and a customer is a ready buyer” - in natural language those terms refer to people, not to relationship.

In a simple yet brilliant move Ziegler suggests to introduce the other term of the relationship, i.e. the SF practitioner, in those formulations.

Therefore, we have:

“visitor/host”

“complainant/sympathizer”

“customer/consultant”

This way:

- the focus is clearly on the relationship, and any temptation to label the client is warded off

- the interactional nature of SF, which is its essence, is properly re-established; and it makes you wonder that a discipline that places so much emphasis on language and its nuances did not come up with something like this before…

- roles are implicitly suggested for the SF practitioner: to be a host when the person approaches as a visitor, to sympathize when the client needs to be heard and to help clients find their own way forward  when they are ready. An effective partnership is set for every possible scenario.

- the name of the game is recognizing which kind of conversation is taking place and therefore in which role the SF practitioner can best be useful to the client.

As Ziegler points out: “being able to recognize what kind of conversation is occurring is extremely helpful; knowing also how to invite, respectfully decline, and offer counter-invitations are essential skills”.

“Visitor”, “Complainant”, “Customer” Revisited by Phillip B. Ziegler in Doing Something Different: Solution-Focused Brief Therapy Practices, Thorana S. Nelson ed., Routledge, New York, 2010.

Tags: Brief-Therapy Practices, complainant, customer, Doing Something Different, Phillip B. Ziegler, roles for practitionersrac, Thorana S. Nelson, visitor