Truman Customer Story Column
Feedback that came back in three words
I took the questionnaire and looked at it for a while. Across six questions, he had written only a handful of words. In the box asking about his worries: "insurance." In the box about his impression of the clinic: "clean, kind." Most of the other boxes were empty.
A questionnaire with many blanks is not a careless one. Some men are simply sparing with words, and some, after weighing what to say, leave only the words themselves. But the context between those words is something I can fill in, since I sat across from him in the exam room. So today I will write in the blanks on his behalf.
The first word: "insurance"
That was his answer to what worried him most before surgery. Not pain, not scarring, but insurance.
It does come up often in consultation. For patients enrolled in Korea's national health insurance, gynecomastia surgery may be covered when certain diagnostic criteria are met. Whether a given case qualifies differs from person to person, so the order of things is to confirm your own condition through examination and testing. As I recall, he only moved on to his next worry after that point was settled in the consultation. One less thing to write in the worry box.
The second and third words: "clean, kind"
In the box about first impressions of the clinic, those two words sat side by side.
Two words with a single comma between them, summarizing the time he spent at the clinic. The space was clean, the people were kind. There are times when that kind of compression feels more honest than praise written out at length. It is exactly the manner of someone who says what is needed and nothing more.
And one sentence: "Don't deliberate, just do it"
The man who had answered in single words throughout wrote his first full sentence on the last question, the one asking what he would say to men facing the same concern.
"Don't deliberate, just do it."
Since it was the one answer this sparing man put into a sentence, it caught my eye as well. But it comes from the experience of a man who has already had the surgery. Whether your condition calls for surgery, and which approach suits you, is something to judge after confirming your own condition through an examination.
The blanks are part of the feedback
Three words and one sentence. That was all his questionnaire held, yet it did not read as lacking to me. What he had worried about got resolved; the time he spent at the clinic was not bad; and out of that came the will to leave a word for someone facing the same thing. The whole frame of a review was there.
If long explanations are hard for you, single words are fine in the exam room too. We will ask, confirm, and fill in what lies between them.
