Dealing with difficult people/Aftersales Cases

Why can some customers be difficult?

- They aren’t responding as you would like
- Their expectations are not met
- E.g. Artwork is wrong/bad, missed deadline, non functional…

What do they feel?

- Rejection
- Failure
- Humiliation
- Lost of power

Only a few customers are actually difficult probably less than 5% of all the people that you deal with although they do tend to be the ones we remember.

What not to do?

- Get defensive/argue
- Treat it trivially
- Interrupt
- Justify the problem
- Accuse/blame them
- Patronise them
- Make excuses/apportion blame
- Make unrealistic promises
- Forget to keep them informed
- Take it personally
- Retaliate or seek revenge
- Forget your communication skills
- Lose your sense of humour
- Dwell on the negative experience.

Remember:

Don’t get defensive – keep calm watch your tone of voice
Don’t apportion blame – customers want a solution they don’t care why it happened.
Don’t accuse them of getting it wrong – You didn’t do XXX instead say misunderstanding or double check the instructions
Don’t make unrealistic promises
Don’t lose your sense of humour
After a stressful call – if possible take a break to let the problem go otherwise you might carry it on to the next caller