Customer Service Skills Knowledge Base and Frequently Asked Questions
Dealing With Difficult Customers, Angry Customers and Just Plain Rude Customers
Main Page
• Defusing Hostile Customers Workbook
• Perfect Phrases For Customer Service
•Free customer service tips and techniques and customer service scripts
Customer Service Discussion List
Customer Service Library Online
• Most Recently Added Customer Service Resources
• Most Popular/Viewed Customer Service Resources
Those in customer service postions in retail, hospitality (hotel and restaurants), call centers and government have to deal with difficult customers, angry customers, and just plain rude customers on a daily basis. For customer service staff who are not accustomed to this, or lack the training and knowledge to deal with the difficult, angry and rude, the experience can be stressful and make an otherwise enjoyable job, unpleasant, and even intolerable.
We've put together a number of techniques, tips, hints, and advice you can apply to various difficult customer situations. The majority of these have been adapted from The Defusing Hostile Customers Workbook, available through us or amazon.com.
General Questions About Difficult, Angry, and Abusive Customers:
- Why are some customers so darned difficult and rude?
- Why do angry customers pick on me, when I don't make the rules?
- What do angry customers really want from me?
- What is the CARP system for defusing angry and difficult customers?
- Can you summarize the most important principles I should apply when deaing with angry or abusive customers?
- Why is self-control so important when dealing with difficult customers?
- What are possible consequences if I lose my cool and lose self-control with an angry customer?
- What techniques, hints, and advice can I use to maintain my cool and self-control when dealing with an obnoxious customer?
- How can I continue to improve my ability to deal with difficult, aggressive, and insulting customers?
Specific Techniques, Advice and Hints and Tips Applied To Difficult and Abusive and Angry Customers
- What Is "disengaging from angry customer", and what is it used for?
- I deal with angry customers on the phone. How can I get them to stop talking at me, and start listening?
- How do I use the "We Technique" to send a message I'm working with the difficult customer?
- What are "hot words" and "hot phrases", and why should I avoid them with customers?
- What is "removing the audience" and why is it important with angry or manipulative customers?
- Can you suggest a way to start off conversations with customers, difficult, angry or otherwise?
- How can I use surprise as a way to stop an angry or abusive customer from talking at me?
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.