Asking questions opened the door for customers to experience what the psychologist James Pennebaker calls the joy of talking. Years ago, Pennebaker divided strangers into small groups. Imagine that you’ve just joined one of his groups, and you have fifteen minutes to talk with strangers about a topic of your choice. You might chat about your hometown, where you went to college, or your career. After the fifteen minutes are up, you rate how much you like the group. It turns out that the more you talked, the more you like the group. This isn’t surprising, since people love to talk about
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