How to Deal With Difficult Customers: 9 Effective Strategies
Dealing with upset customers is just a part of running a business. You might not deal with them daily, but eventually, you’re going to come into contact with an unsatisfied customer—no matter how hard you try to avoid it. While business owners and managers alike strive to keep their customers happy, there will always be someone that comes in upset and complains about a service or product.
Though you might not have bad customer interactions regularly, when you do, it tends to be memorable. It can be challenging and overwhelming dealing with customer problems, but with the right toolset, you can achieve the best possible outcome.
The best businesspeople learn excellent customer service, including how to deal with difficult customers. This article will give you tips from some of the best people in customer management.
Why Is It Important to Deal with Difficult Customers?
While it may be tempting to avoid difficult people altogether, the better idea is to deal with rude customers right then and there. Dealing with difficult people is essential, whether or not you like doing it. For this reason, it is important to learn some customer service skills and practice them.
Knowing how to handle difficult customers and complaints is an important part of a business because:
- It will help to retain customers.
- It will encourage customers to recommend your business.
- It can provide valuable feedback.
- It develops customer rapport.
- It improves your business branding.
Dealing with difficult customers head-on gives you a better reputation, but only when done correctly. You can’t expect to handle problems with more negativity. Instead, you need to approach any issue with the mentality that there is room for improvement and that the customer complaining is a human who deserves to be heard.
Between the following tips and examples of dealing with difficult customers, you should be ready to do just that.
How to Handle Difficult Customers: 9 Tips
While it is a nice dream to operate your business based on the idea that no one will come to complain, the reality is there will always be someone that has an issue. Your job is to work through the issue to discover the best resolution for everyone involved.
Here are a few of the best tips from professionals to incorporate into your handling difficult customers training.
1. Remain Calm and Professional
One of the best ways to handle an angry customer is to not react negatively to their anger. Practice active listening and make sure to reiterate what the customer is saying. When you have a customer that is verbally abusive and swearing, you cannot respond in the same manner. Take a moment to calm down and respond as properly as you can. In these cases, you can indeed kill them with kindness.
Remind the customer you want to help them and that you are here to resolve the situation. This statement alone can go a long way to defusing things. Then, work to resolve the issue. Whether the issue is simple and can be fixed in a few minutes or the problem is complex and takes days to resolve, you are there to find a solution.
2. Practice Reflective Listening
When a frustrated customer has voiced their complaints, reflect their concerns back to them in a way that shows them their concerns have been heard and understood.
Consider the following of our angry customer examples:
Client: “I am frustrated because everything is out of my budget, and you won’t work with me.”
Manager: “I realize this, but…”
The conversation above is not going to end well by anyone’s standards. Instead, reflective listening looks more like the manager interpreting from body language more than just words. Once this is done, it will be reflected back and sound more like the following:
Customer: “I’m frustrated because everything is out of my budget, and you won’t work with me.”
Manager: “I’m hearing that our pricing is a barrier. Our products and services currently don’t fit into your budget and you would like discounts. Is this correct?”
While you may not be able to come to a resolution, your goal is to make your customer feel heard and this will help when dealing with difficult customers. As a bonus, you are clarifying what the customer needs to be happy with the resolution.
3. Let Them Speak
In many cases, simply allowing an angry customer the time and space to voice their complaint will help them feel better. Don’t argue with the customer or try to speak over them. Instead, let them have their say. Let them get it all out of their system and practice active listening through good use of body language. Lean into the conversation and nod your head in agreement when it makes sense. Repeat key points back to them.
For instance, when your customer says something like, “I brought this product home, and it didn’t work well in this situation.” Reply with something to the effect of, “So, I understand you’re unhappy with the performance of our product during this instance. Let’s see how we can resolve this.”
Then, judge the situation and find solutions that may work. If you don’t find any agreeable resolution, consider refunding, bringing management on board, or agreeing to disagree. Part of handling difficult customers is knowing when you can’t resolve the issue without assistance.
4. Be Understanding of Their Viewpoint
It can be easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to something a customer is complaining about, but you must be more careful than that. Take time to build rapport with your customer by empathizing with their situation. Put yourself in their shoes. Show that you understand their frustration.
When you empathize with their problem, it’s easier to calm upset customers down and come up with a solution. It can be a natural reaction to get louder as the customer does, but instead lower your voice and speak slowly. Keep a clear mind and remain courteous. Maintaining a helpful attitude is something you’ll notice in all of our examples of dealing with difficult customers.
5. Keep an Open Mind
Listening to the customer’s experience and treating it as an opportunity to learn and improve will help you keep an open mind to what they are saying. Work hard at not coming from the viewpoint that you and your employees did everything correctly.
Remember they are human beings with their own experiences and the occasional bad day. Maybe they had a cop stop them this morning or got into an argument at home. Part of dealing with difficult customers is trying to understand and work through the problem with them instead of against them.
6. Recognize Concerns When Dealing with Customer Complaints
Remember, as a business owner or manager, you need to hear more than just the negative words the customer is saying. In some cases, complaints will be random and accidental, but there are times when you need to recognize patterns of unhappy customers.
Take note when several concerns about the same product or service are expressed. This is a good time to reevaluate your offerings and find areas for improvement.
7. Take a Deep Breath and Don’t Take It Personally
Prepare yourself for dealing with customers by training in stress management, anger management, and even negotiation. When in a customer-facing role, dealing with the occasional difficult customer is unavoidable. You need to know how to remain professional and calm.
Everyone reacts to this stress differently. Some isolate, cry, get angry, or get unresponsive. Learn your unique reaction patterns so they don’t catch you off guard. Remember, your customer isn’t the only one that can get irritated. If you find that you are lacking patience in a tense situation, redirect the customer to another employee or a manager and explain you are doing what is best for them.
8. Don’t De-Escalate the Situation—Escalate It
While it may seem counterintuitive, escalating a situation before a customer has the chance to do so can be a very effective way to solve the problem. When a customer asks to speak with a manager, it tends to make the situation feel doomed.
However, when you suggest ‘let me get my manager for you,’ your client will take this as a sign you are taking them seriously. As a result, they often calm down.
Escalation doesn’t have to mean a failure on your part. It means that you care enough to get your customer the person capable of offering the right resolution. If you happen to be that expert, then immediately establish yourself as such and provide some angry customer examples you’ve previously dealt with. This will highlight your ability to resolve the issue.
9. Come up With Resolutions
Whether or not an acceptable resolution is offered can make or break the customer experience. At the outset, come at the problem with a resolution mindset. You don’t want to have bad reviews and negative interactions. Take the time to come up with resolutions as if all customers are watching you.
A happy client can go a long way, but negative reviews and referrals tend to travel further. Give a refund when you can, offer a new product or free service, and move on. At the end of the day, you may have a happy customer in your hands.
Types of Difficult People and How to Approach Them
Not all challenging customers are the same, and you will need to develop a strategy that works for each one. This way, you can maximize customer satisfaction and, therefore, encourage customer loyalty.
The Indecisive or Confused Customer
These customers seem to take forever to make a decision and then second guess their choice. An indecisive customer asks question upon question and won’t come to a decision easily. They want to be certain about what they purchase and are afraid of making mistakes. Though they are polite, they can be very draining and may take up a lot of your already packed schedule.
How to Deal with Indecisive or Confused Customers?
To better handle these customers, try to figure out what is most important to them. Ask questions that are specific to what they are looking for to help identify their needs. Is price, quality, or a specific feature most important to them? Once you know what drives their decision-making, it is easier to showcase these attributes in your service or product.
Another way to help your confused customers is to offer them an incentive. Consider sending them a personalized discount code via text to sweeten the deal and help them make the jump. You can also give specific examples of how others liked and used your service or product.
The Angry or Demanding Customer
The angry customer comes in critical, arrogant, and aggressive and may even veer toward verbally abusive. These customers come in with the attitude that the customer is always right, and they may yell at you until they get their way.
How to Deal with Angry or Demanding Customers?
When it comes to these customers, it won’t matter if you’re wrong or right. Simply apologize and offer a solution once they calm down. Don’t shout back at them or try to match their aggression. Kindness is always the best option, especially where customers are concerned. And remember, a converted bully can become your most loyal customer.
The Impatient Customer
This customer is inconvenienced by everything. They simply can’t understand that it can’t be done or that something isn’t available. They are shocked you don’t offer a service or feature or that you are closed on Sunday. They often use threatening phrases like “I’ll take my business elsewhere.”
How to Deal with Impatient Customers?
While it can be tempting to give in to their complaints and find a way to bump them up, that makes for poor business. Do your best to explain why things are this way and that you will serve him as best you can. If needed, refer them to a colleague who can help deliver better customer support.
The Complaining Customer
Complaining customers always find something to complain about. They will complain about any minor change or inconvenience. You feel like you deal with them too often.
How to Deal with Complaining Customers?
Start by accepting that these customers aren’t going to be happy no matter what you do. Help them as best as you can, and pass them on to another team member so you can get on with your day.
And remember, every customer is different. Categorizing types of customers can be helpful, but don’t be afraid to follow your gut and take the approach that feels right in the moment. Different situations require different solutions, and that’s okay. The most important thing is to remain calm and aim for a happy compromise.
Customer Relationships: Challenges & Solutions
You can’t operate a business without dealing with the occasional unhappy client. How you handle them will always tell you more about you and your business skills than the actual customer. Take some time to learn more about customer management and your business will improve because of it. Part of learning how to deal with difficult customers is investing in the right tools to assist you.
Dealing with a difficult customer isn’t the only problem managers and business owners face. Not having enough clients, having too many clients, not being responsive to clients, and lack of communication are all challenges that can arise in a business owner’s relationship with a customer.
A customer relationship management (CRM) system can help with these problems because it will help the business owner or manager struggling with maintaining positive relationships with customers.
If you are looking for a way to manage customer notes and track employees’ interactions with customers, a CRM tool is what you need. If you are struggling with managing your customers, you need to have a CRM platform. If you already have a system in place and are still having problems, it is time to get a better CRM system to help you deal with your clients.
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