Customer Service Skills Knowledge Base and Frequently Asked Questions
Why is self-control so important when dealing with difficult customers?
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When you have anger or aggressiveness directed at you, there's a natural tendency to respond to the angry customer with your own anger, aggression and frustration. While that's natural, and human, it's also one of the worst things you can do.
When you respond with anger, or lose your self-control, you create a circle of escalation, or an escalation cycle. You respond angrily, then the customer ups the ante and increases his or her angry behavior, and the whole interaction gets out of control.
The solution is to use self-control, so you don't get suckered in to wasting time arguing or otherwise feeding into the anger of the customer.
It's to you own benefit. By remaining cool, calm and collected, you save time, frustration, and increase your own personal safety, since escalated conflict is more likely to increase the possibility of physical violence.
Further, when you lose self-control, you make poor decisions, and cannot implement the many hints, tips and techniques available to defuse hostile customers.
Robert Bacal is the author of two books on customer service: Perfect Phrases for Customer Service: Hundreds of Tools, Techniques, and Scripts for Handling Any Situation, and Defusing Hostile Customers Workbook. Most of the questions and answers in the Customer Service Knowledgebase (which you are reading now) is based on the material in these books.