Customer Service Skills Knowledge Base and Frequently Asked Questions
Why are some customers so darned difficult and rude?
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It's understandable that customer service providers often ask this question: Why do customers act so rudely or aggressively. While it may be an interesting sociological question, I suggest to people that they don't focus on trying to answer the question, since it doesn't really help to address a customer's anger. If they are standing in front of you acting badly, or angrily, knowing that the person is doing this because of sociological trends towards a more aggressive cultuer does absolutely nothing for you.
Besides, the answers are too varied to be useful with respect to any single customer. A customer might be having a bad day (you have those, right?) and simply get more easily frustrated with you, or the person may have a mental disorder, or be brought up badly by Ma and Pa.
There they stand however, and knowing these kinds of "explanations" doesn't help you cope with the situation productively.
But here's a simple answer. The rude or angry customer is being human, and human beings are sometimes wonderful, and sometimes annoying and rude.
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.