Clients are People: Handle with Care

Article courtesy: Skipp Porteous

As a private investigator, who, by happenstance, works almost exclusively with individuals, and not insurance companies, law firms, or other businesses, I've had to learn how to deal with human foibles. I used to get exasperated with the constant onslaught of people's problems: I wanted to solve cases, damn it! Then one day I realized that everyone who comes to me has a problem. That's why they come to Sherlock Investigations. What I am, I realized, is a problem solver, not a case solver.

Whatever kinds of clients you have, you want to make your clients happy. Satisfied clients make you feel good, and satisfied clients make our profession look professional.

How do you satisfy clients, particularly in domestic cases? Well, first of all, know thyself. If you're a total cynic, or don't like people, maybe you'd be happier with surveillance, industrial TSCM, computer forensics, or some other technical aspect of private investigation. When a woman comes to you because she suspects that her spouse is cheating on her, or that her son ran off with a cult, or that her sister is missing and feared murdered, or that her husband abandoned her with six kids, or that she gets harassing or threatening phone calls, you must show compassion.

We've all had our "clients from hell." Unfortunately, some of them just can't be avoided. So, Bill Pappas, of A Very Private Eye, in Florida, has a "special client" rate. If you can, though, head off trouble before it begins.

Think for a moment about the range of emotions a person is feeling when they seek out a private investigator. First of all, most people have never ever hired a PI. So, right away, there's an element of fear. Most of what they perceive about you is what they've seen in the movies. It's interesting how disarming, and calming, just being very nice to a client can be.

Besides fear, there's guilt. Those who inquire of you sometimes feel guilty because they have some doubts about what they're doing. Namely, checking up on another person. Perhaps it's a person they love, but mistrust.

The prospective client may come to you very angry. Someone's cheated on them, or cheated them out of their entire life savings through Internet fraud.

Then there is the client's perception of the problem. Now, you'll notice that many times the client doesn't really know what her problem is. And if she doesn't know the problem, she certainly doesn't know the solution.

A mother who has remarried may ask you to locate her runaway teenage daughter. What is the problem? Well, that the kid ran away is obvious. But why did the kid run away? Is her new husband sexually abusing her daughter? That may be the real, underlying problem. So, yes, you'll still have to find the teen, but you might also want to probe some to find out why she ran away.

A 70 year-old woman calls and says that when she's out shopping people from her building sneak into her apartment and go through her personal things. She explains with plausible detail everything they've done to harass her.

In such a scenario, I once set up a hidden surveillance camera in a New York City woman's apartment to catch the culprit whom she said snuck in the front door even while she read in bed at night. While I was setting up the equipment, she went to her door and bolted three locks and attached two chains. I asked her if she did this every night. She said that she did.

When I tried to reason with her that they couldn't have done what she claimed, she exclaimed, “Oh, they're very smart!”

After running through hours of mind-numbing videotape the next day, I called her to report the result. People in this frame of mind always say, “they” knew that I had been there to catch them in the act, and therefore “they” didn't come in. She insisted I come back for a second day of videotaping.

I'm often faced with this situation, especially in domestic TSCM cases. Probably two-thirds of my TSCM cases involve paranoid, that is, mentally ill, people, especially somewhat demented elderly woman.

In the case of the woman above, I told her that if she had her doctor or lawyer call me, I would be more than happy to come back. She said that didn't want to bother them.

In another case, a fifty-something year-old woman begged me to sweep her seventy-something year-old mother's apartment for video cameras and listening devices, as she was driving the family crazy with reports of eavesdroppers and spies. The woman thought every room was bugged.

I told the daughter that her mother needed to see the family doctor. While she agreed, she said that they couldn't get her to go to him.

Reluctantly, I ended up putting on a show of sweeping the apartment. Upon completing the onerous task, I told the woman that, while I don't know about yesterday, that at the present moment, I felt that the apartment was clean. Then I talked to her about those potassium iodide anti-radiation pills that people living near nuclear reactors keep on hand in case of a nuclear accident. She was aware of them, and visibly brightened with what I told her next.

I said that doctors have pills that can protect one against electronic eavesdropping. With that in mind, she agreed to go to the doctor. He prescribed some medication that helped her mental state, and, without explanation, the “bugging” stopped.

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