Customer-driven questioning in Finnish forestry advisory conversations

ABSTRACT

This paper deepens our understanding of the customer’s role in institutional face-to-face encounters. It includes an in-depth analysis of authentic Finnish forestry advisory conversations to illuminate the specifics of the pursued customer perspective and collaboration. From a total 9:02:09 hours of video recordings the data yielded 89 qualified customer-initiated questions for comprehensive analysis. Results indicated that family forest owners (FFOs) can initiate if they so wish. Most of the posed questions (92.1%) were requests for information or for confirmation, which re-established the institutional positioning of the encounter. The forestry advisory professional presented topics that complied with the meeting’s standard procedure. The actual impact the customer had on the agenda appeared quite limited and genuine collaboration was not quite balanced. Cautious tactics of asking emerged specifically when related to more personal questions. In the shift to a new forestry advisory service era, where publicly funded services are now open to various market-based agents and new tailored advisory traditions are being developed, FFOs are even more important customers. Good advisory services and relationships will be key assets to service providers. Understanding the interactional mechanisms of an institutional encounter is crucial to promote the customer perspective, the initiative and learning of the FFOs.

KEYWORDS:

• Conversation
• customer perspective
• forestry advisory service
• talk-in-interaction

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the Emil Aaltonen Foundation for providing a scholarship for study advancement. The author also wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable contributions and comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In this proposal, the FAP uses the first person singular “I forward the word” (line 1), to which the FFO responds on line 10 with “you forward” to show his approval of the procedure's marching order. Here the FAP acts as an employment agent on behalf of the FFO.

2 For examples of more prototypical requests for confirmation, see Englert (2010) and Heinemann (2010).