Managing Yourself When Dealing With Unhappy Customer

The new age of customer has influenced organization to look into whereas scope of customer service skills for their employees especially managing themselves. Each employee must able to manage themselves when they deal with unhappy customers. It can be face to face customer or even in telephone conversation. Unhappy customers can turn to abusive, loud, crude and aggressive.

Are customers unhappy because of the employee or the provided services? What do we do in return? Unhappy customers may not able to control their anger and can be outspoken towards employees.

Employees should not get emotional when dealing with unhappy customer. Being emotional in return may only trigger the situation to burst up without finding an amicable solution. Mainly when we notice a customer is angry, it is in best if we remain calm and composed. Identifying the root cause or source of the unhappiness should be set as the priority. It is common for customers to vent out his feelings to maximum but surely his actions shall cool down after some time. Let customer voice out his concern completely and till then we should avoid interference. Interfering as customers voice our may only increase the customer’s anger because in his view we are not listening to his points. Remember that customer is not always right but we do not have time to justify the rightness when customers are angry. Let the ego out of the picture and your concern should be resolving the situation rather than start the blame game. Employees should keep on track their body language. Being physically straight to their face may not be ideal. Your upper body should be lowered a bit which indicates acceptance. If possible have your palms together and nod head of approval when customer voice out. Avoid showing inappropriate gestures such pointing out with index finger which can look threatening or harmful to customer. Your expression should genuine and shows sincerity such as describing the statement “We are deeply sorry for the situation you are in”. To return anger with anger is something that clearly should be avoided by the employee. However it is the duty of employees to portray the commitment and willingness in resolving the highlighted complaint. Apologizing whenever required can also be crucial in tackling the situation. Customers would love to see apologetic words and replacement in view to resolve the problem. The employee should consider bringing the customer to a private room as the walk or atmosphere may reduce his anger. Offer the customer a cool drink and state that his situation is understandable and should not have occurred in the first place at all. If the situation still persists, it is important to call in your immediate superior or manager to iron out the situation. Finally apologize again at the end and thank him for voicing out the noted dissatisfaction. As long as we have resolved the situation, customer shall always remain receptive. Take the customer’s contact details so that you can send him a voucher, discount card or gift as part of customer retention.   

Employees should keep in their mind set that customer has nothing personal against them, it is the deficiency in service that invoked his dissatisfaction. The management must also continue to evaluate their employees’ performance and ensure they are given the right training to handle customer. Not all the employees’ are equipped with the required knowledge to handle customers. We do not want to lose even a single customer because our incompetence in tackling the situation. According to Lee Resource Incorporation who claimed that “Attracting a new customer costs 5 times as much as keeping an existing one”. What is more important to sustain a business - Customers or Inability to Manage Oneself?