Save and deal with unhappy clients
Businesses often have to deal with disgruntled customers for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the reasoning is justified, such as the customer’s product continuously failing or a series of misunderstandings leading to a poor experience. Other times, the customer could just be causing trouble to give you a hard time or they might be letting their frustration get the best of them.
However, in both of these situations, it’s important for your business to maintain a calm and collected attitude in order not to negatively affect your reputation. The goal is to provide the disgruntled customer with positive continued service so that they return in the future. Otherwise, you could end up with a customer who will never return again and also let their friends and family know about their negative experience with your business.
Dealing with a disgruntled customer is not easy, but here are a couple of great tips to help you out.
1. Listen to the customer and try to figure out what the problem is
The first thing to do is listen to the customer to figure out what the problem is. When a customer starts to yell or get rude to you, you must try and read between the lines to understand what exactly the customer is upset about. In many cases, the customer just wants someone to listen to their problems and offer some advice or help them with their situation.
Therefore, the goal for you is to figure out the problem so that you can approach the issue calmly and logically. Be patient with the customer and always speak in a calm and composed tone. Body language is also important if the customer is speaking to you in person as the way you react to what they say could either cause them to lash out again or they might not believe that you’re listening at all.
The idea is to listen to the customer first and try to understand their position. Once they’re done talking, you can attempt to summarize and repeat back to the customer what you believe their problem is. If they agree, then you can move on to finding a suitable solution, otherwise, you’ll need to ask them to repeat themselves and try to deduce what the issue is.
2. Don’t take anything the customer says personally
The most important thing to keep in mind is to never let what the customer says personally get to you. They’re going to lash out at you, they will get frustrated and they will likely use questionable vocabulary to describe your company. If you feel like your safety could be in danger then it’s a good idea to call security or to put down the phone.
In many cases, customers will likely only be angry and use rude words because they’re frustrated. In most situations, you’re not the target of their frustration, but rather their experience with your products or your services. When a disgruntled customer approaches you, you mustn’t let your personal feelings get in the way–it’s all business.
3. Remain calm and collected when interacting with a disgruntled customer
You should always remain as calm as possible when interacting with a disgruntled customer. Don’t start shouting back or going down to their level just to make a point or argue with them. The more frustrated you let yourself get, the higher the chance of the entire situation escalating. Even if they’re saying incredibly unreasonable or rude things, you should remain calm and consider calling security or asking the customer to leave if you feel like your safety could be in danger.
However, the ideal situation would be to remain as calm as possible. Calling your colleagues to assist could be an option to help you catch a breather and let yourself cool down a bit. It’s incredibly frustrating trying to maintain a calm composure in the face of a disgruntled customer, but there’s little you can do. Acting out and arguing back could escalate the situation, so you must stay as calm as possible.
Once the problem has been dealt with and the customer has left, you should take a few minutes to relax and calm yourself down before dealing with the next customer. If possible, take a small break on your own to give yourself some time to process everything that’s happened.
4. Under no circumstances should you be patronizing or sarcastic
As much as you might want to put the customer in their place and argue back, you must remain calm and stop yourself from being sarcastic or patronizing to the customer. For instance, if the customer arrives in your store with a fully working product that they claim is broken, don’t go out of your way to put the customer down for not knowing how to use it. Instead, make sure you’re calm, and collected and offer real solutions to help them.
The last thing you want is for the customer to leave unsatisfied after being ridiculed for something. Sarcastic staff are never going to make a customer happy and your goal is to help them, not make fun of them.
5. Work to find a suitable solution
At the end of the day, you want to find a solution that allows the customer to leave satisfied without any expense to your company or staff. Although some requests are unreasonable, if it’s possible to resolve the issue efficiently without much expense to your business, then it’s arguably the best choice to go with. If the customer hasn’t told you what they feel is a fair resolution then it’s worth referring back to the first tip regarding listening to the customer.
If the customer refuses to conclude then there isn’t much you can do outside of asking them calmly to leave, calling security or following up on any legal threats that they may have thrown your way. Most customers only use the threat of legal action to get results, but you shouldn’t give in to these customers if their requests are completely out of your means or unreasonable.
