How To Deal With A Difficult Customer

If you run a business or work in customer service, you’ll inevitably encounter difficult customers sometimes. When learning how to deal with challenging customers, you can learn how to de-escalate heated conversations.

Learning how to turn negative situations into positive outcomes with the right techniques can help you perform better in your job. In this article, we discuss why it’s important to navigate discussions with challenging customers and how to deal with a difficult customer so you can excel in your role.

Why is it important to learn how to deal with a difficult customer?

Knowing how to manage challenging situations with customers is an essential skill for anyone who owns a business or works in customer service. You can learn how to improve a customer’s experience with skills and various techniques. These skills prepare you to manage customers’ expectations, de-escalate challenging situations, find solutions, and improve their overall customer experience. As a business owner or customer service employee, people can come to you with complaints regularly, so being well-prepared to provide help is vital.

Here is a list of techniques to use when you encounter a difficult customer:

Maintain Professional Communication
When communicating with difficult customers, it can be helpful to maintain professionalism. To ensure you handle situations professionally, you can remain courteous and friendly with customers, even in challenging situations. While interacting with dissatisfied customers, you can be mindful of how your actions and reactions affect customers. By controlling your impulses, you can navigate discussions with more ease.

Maintaining an even tone with customers and checking your body language to make sure you’re keeping yourself open can help you manage these situations.
Keep in mind that customers come into conversations with their own history and influences. Dissatisfied customers have complex behaviours, and the best way to navigate these conversations is to maintain professionalism and respectfulness.

Remain Calm and Professional
No matter the reaction of a client, even if a client is screaming at you down the phone or making a scene in the office, you to remain calm. If you reduce yourself to their level of hostility, you will put your reputation on the line and could escalate the situation. You can make your point clear to the client with a calm voice and demeanor. Though this can be difficult to do in some heated cases, but take a couple of deep breaths before responding to these types of clients.

According to the psychology of human interaction, people will often mirror the emotional signals you emit. When you’re angry, it’s possible to get an angry rise out of someone else. But if you’re able to remain calm, you can often encourage them to be calm as well and mirror your tone, volume and attitude.

Practice Active Listening And Empathy
When managing situations with difficult customers, it’s crucial that you practice active listening. This skill requires you to focus entirely on the customer and to attempt to understand both what they’re worried about. Active listening also requires you to think of a thoughtful answer rather than having a reactive one. When you give customers your complete attention, you can get a better grasp of the situation to find appropriate solutions.
Make sure your client understands that you’re focused on the problem.

Asking open-ended questions will provide clarity on the issue at hand so you can get to the root of the problem together. Through active listening and asking questions to identify the specifics of the problem you’ll be able to shift the focus towards finding a solution (and calm them down in the process).

Simply taking the time to listen to their problems with curiosity and empathize with the customer. This could be all that’s needed to solve the issue. Be respectful, empathic and courteous in all interactions.

Apologize Offer A Solution
Express a genuine apology for any inconvenience or dissatisfaction the customer has experienced even if the issue isn’t your fault, apologizing can go a long way in defusing tension and offer a solution that meets their needs and expectations. Apologizing sincerely does not mean admitting fault or liability, but rather expressing regret for the inconvenience or dissatisfaction caused by the issue.

Express your regret for their negative experience. Saying sorry can go a long way in calming the customer down, and showing that you respect them. Avoid making excuses, blaming others, or minimizing the issue. Instead, use phrases like “I’m sorry to hear that”, “I apologize for the inconvenience”, or “I understand your frustration”.

Offer A Solution
This isn’t about admitting you’re wrong, but about finding a way to solve the problem for the client without losing your cool in the process. Offer a solution by presenting the customer with one or more options that can address their problem or complaint, such as a refund, a replacement, a discount, or a free service. By apologizing and offering a solution, you can demonstrate your accountability and commitment to customer satisfaction.

Build Trust
An angry customer has likely had a negative experience with your product, service, or company in general. The relationship may be damaged, and you need to work on re-establishing lost customer trust to repair it by taking responsibility. The customer will respect your ownership of the issue when you’re at fault and start to let down their walls. Even when they are at fault, your humility, transparency and honesty will make the client calm down and accept their faults.

Conclusion
Dealing with difficult customers can be challenging. But if you handle the situation well, you may even be able to improve your relationship and create further opportunities. Make sure that you listen actively to problems or complaints, and resist the urge to interrupt or solve the problem right away. Be empathic and understanding, and make sure that your body language communicates this.

If you’re not sure how to fix the situation, then ask your client what will make him happy. If it’s in your power, then get it done as soon as possible. Follow up with your customer to make sure he was happy with how the situation was resolved.