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When we deal with customers, most of the time, we find that our customers are understanding and tolerant. Besides, they are also knowledgeable. They hold high expectations for the quality of products or services. Being a product provider or service provider, you should never take these customers for granted. You need to take good care of them.
What if the customers we deal with are wrong, should we ignore them? Should we reject their requests? For people who get involved in sales, even when a customer makes mistake, you must also respect and serve him or her well. It is important for you to respect the customers’ perception and treat them in a courteous manner.
Let’s review five ways to deal with difficult customers.
1. Don’t take it personally when listening to a customer complaint
We can often become emotionally involved leading to us feeling hurt, becoming annoyed or even angry. These are warning signals that you may react defensively rather than respond calmly to the customer. This behavior shows up in the tone of our voice, our speech rate and lets your client know that you have lost control.
A customer complaint is being aimed at your company or the ‘professional you’ so please don’t take it personally. Instead welcome the complaint because the customer is giving you the opportunity to fix their problem and resolve the situation. Customers who don’t complain won’t come back either and will most probably spreading bad news.
2. Acknowledge the customer
Acknowledge means to recognize the customer with genuine gratitude. This is the first step in your taking control. Begin by breathing deeper and slower, this will allow your voice to sound calm, project warmth and credibility. Shallow, quick breathing makes us talk too quickly, with a higher pitch betraying that we are under stress and not in control.
You should acknowledge what they are saying by using survival phrases such as “I appreciate you drawing this issue to my attention…Thank you for calling or I can understand how you must be feeling.”
3.You have to recognize the customer’s point and frustration.
This would create an impression that you understand the rise of their emotions and that you are willing to listen and do something about it. Phrases like “I can see where you’re coming from” or “If I were you I would probably do the same thing” would help. This would open up a window of opportunity for a much lighter conversation that would more likely give rise to a solution.
While expressing empathy, listen to the customer and identify the problem. Anger is mostly the customers’ way to cry for help. Asking questions regarding the matter will make them believe that you are indeed interested in helping them out by taking immediate actions.
It is important however to probe and make inquiries positively. By this I mean to not do it in such a way that as if you are blaming the issue on the customer. This would further add fuel to the fire. Phrases starting with “are you sure….Mr. customer?” should be avoided.
4. Take actions and provide a solution.
At this stage, you have to convince and persuade the customer that the problem will be heeded and necessary and immediate actions are to be taken. Satisfying the customer’s demands right away would make them feel like they have not been ignored.
If the issue is not bound to be resolved right away, the customer service representative should give the customer the utmost assurance that courses of action are taken to resolve the problem.
5. Use reverse number lookup
When dealing with for individuals interested in local purchases via phone you don’t know who you are talking to. To minify risks and make sure person you are talking to is not a scam consider running reverse lookup on their contact details.
How? Use reverse number lookup services to get access to millions of phone records your phone company can’t give you, including unlisted numbers and cell phones. Consider just the top five reasons your business needs reverse phone lookup:
- Every business gets scammed, often on the phone. If someone in your company has been duped into authorizing credit card spending over the phone, for example, you can now track down the culprits with reverse number lookup.
- It’s also great for identifying mystery numbers that show up on the company phone bill.
- If an employee is receiving an unusually high number of calls, for instance, you need to find out “who”, “what” and “why”.
Finally, handling a customer complaint either by phone or face to face can be a challenging task, especially if it is highly charged with emotion and irrational statements. A natural reaction would be to feel defensive and try to explain why a particular situation had occurred. This reaction will only put you on the back foot.