If your customers are getting frustrated and they’re showing physical signs that they’re losing interest in what you’re saying, it can be difficult to know how to proceed. Keeping customer loyalty and making sure that your staff is well-equipped on how to deal with a difficult customer can prevent the chance that your business could experience negative feedback or lose future customers from a bad experience. Here are some top tips on how to deal with a difficult customer:
Burning Reflective Listening
Reflective listening is an approach where you can interpret the words and body language of a person and then reflect the thoughts and feelings that you’ve heard back from a customer. A customer in a difficult position never wants to hear “I understand” statements like this can often devalue what they’ve just said. Responding back to the customer with their statement can clarify what their concerns are and make sure that you can work towards a resolution.
Work At Letting Go of Fear
It can be easy to feel unconfident when you’re speaking to a customer that’s distressed. Rather than experiencing fear that can drive negative outcomes in your reactions, you might need to adjust your mindset so that you can produce solutions easier. When Sunday comes to you with a customer service concern you need to put out of your mindset that you are preparing to fix something. Make sure that you’re properly listening, understanding, and working towards the next steps. Don’t focus on quickly looking for a solution without hearing them.
Maintain A Calm And Professional Tone
It’s very easy to get caught up in the emotion of a difficult customer. Maintaining an assertive yet common professional tone is the best way to handle the interaction. Any aggressive body language should be avoided and you should refrain from calling a person names or writing something in anger that could come back to haunt you.
If you are interested in learning more about how to improve your customer service interactions, contact us today to learn more.
This blog was written by Ingrid Lindberg, a customer service speaker and founder of Chief Customer. Her work has spanned the Fortune 500 – including Finance, Healthcare, CPG, Telco and Retail, working with companies to create differentiating customer experience strategies and cultures.
