When customers are clearly agitated and need to vent their frustration, it's important not to contradict what they're saying.
COMPLAINTS – BEING RUDE TO CUSTOMERS
ustomer service representatives may be rude to customers, even without realizing it. Three important mistakes are telling customers to calm down, contradicting customers, and assuming your customers are acting in bad faith.
Asking someone to calm down can have the opposite effect. It can sound condescending and add to the frustration. Instead, you can use these defusing techniques to calm down agitated customers:
- allow customers to vent their frustration by listening carefully
- show empathy and understanding of the customers' emotional reaction, and
- validate your customers' feelings
When customers are clearly agitated and need to vent their frustration, it's important not to contradict what they're saying. So avoid saying things like "You must have misunderstood" or "We never do that."
Instead, use empathetic statements to confirm you understand the customers' emotional reaction and their feelings about the situation are normal and legitimate. For example, you might say something like "I understand how frustrating that must be."
If you make it clear you suspect a customer is acting in bad faith, conflict between you and your customer is likely to escalate. Instead, start by assuming a problem isn't the customer's fault and this person isn't deliberately misrepresenting the situation.
Don't prejudge your customers according to reputation or stereotypes of class, culture, or any other generalized assumptions.
Instead, try to give your customers the benefit of the doubt and cultivate an attitude of trust. This starts with a presupposition that your customers' intentions are honest and sincere. Even if customers initially appear unreasonable or even possibly dishonest, they may be acting perfectly reasonably from their own vantage point.
DO'S AND DON'TS WHEN HANDLING COMPLAINTS
| COMMON MISTAKES | DO'S | DON'TS |
|---|---|---|
| TRYING TO AVOID YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES | BE HELPFUL "I can..." "I'll be with you as soon as I can." TAKE OWNERSHIP OF THE PROBLEM "Let me find out how I can help you." "I'll find out." "I'll hand you over to X, who will be able to help." MAKE A COMMITMENT TO HELP "I'll do everything I can to help sort this out." |
"No, I can't..." "I'm busy." "I can't help you." "I don't know." "The problem is not my fault." "That's not my job." "I'll call the manager to help you." |
| SETTING UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS | ASSURE CUSTOMERS YOU WANT TO HELP "I understand how important this is to you, and I'll do my best to assist you." STATE ONLY WHAT'S POSSIBLE "What is possible is..." |
"I promise to sort this out immediately." "There won't be any other problems." "I'm sure the manager will make an exception in your case." |
| CRITICIZING YOUR COMPANY | APOLOGIZE "I'm so sorry this happened." FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED "I'm sorry. I'll try to find out how this happened." ACKNOWLEDGE EMOTIONS AND FOCUS ON PROBLEM SOLVING "I can understand why you're angry. Let's see what we can do to fix this problem." |
"I'm sorry, that product is always giving problems." "I'm sorry – X is often rude." "It's terrible that this company does that." |
| TELLING CUSTOMERS TO CALM DOWN | LISTEN "Uh huh. When did this happen?" SHOW EMPATHY AND UNDERSTANDING "I can understand how upsetting that would be." VALIDATE CUSTOMERS' FEELINGS "I realize how frustrated and angry you're feeling right now." |
"There's no need to be angry with me, I haven't done anything." "I don't understand why you're so angry." "Calm down." |
| CONTRADICTING YOUR CUSTOMERS | "So are you saying that ...?" "I can understand how you could interpret it that way." "That must be very frustrating." |
"You must have misunderstood." "We never do that." "That's not what happened." |
| ASSUMING YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE ACTING IN BAD FAITH | DON'T PREJUDGE "Can you tell me more so that I can understand this better?" GIVE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT "I'll do my best to find out how this happened." |
"We've never had this problem." "You must have done something wrong." |
Catherine works at a call center. Follow along as she deals with Julio who's upset about his laptop's slow repair time.
JULIO: I want to find out what's going on with you people! I sent my laptop in for repairs on Monday and it's Thursday already! I rely on that laptop for important work.
Julio sounds angry.
CATHERINE: Yes, I see.
Catherine is sympathetic.
JULIO: Why haven't I got it back? It was meant to be fixed within two days. And why has no one told me what's going on?
CATHERINE: I'm sorry you haven't heard from anyone. I understand your frustration.
JULIO: It's more than that – it's going to make me miss my deadlines. I'm not going to pay for this.
CATHERINE: I understand why you're angry. Why don't you give me your ticket number and I'll try to find out what's going on with the repair?
Catherine is calm.
Catherine did a good job of being polite. She allowed Julio to vent, was empathetic, and validated his feelings. She trusted his motives and didn't assume he was simply trying to get away with not paying for work done. She tried to focus on solving the customer's problem, rather than arguing with him.
I have been teaching and training agents, team leaders, supervisors, managers and admins of call centers and other businesses in BPO related fields. This series, comes as a result of that experience. I have more than 4,000 modules that I plan on sharing here. This is # 002-05