Another Contributor to Problems Dealing With Angry Clientele — That’s You and Your Managers!
In your job and in your role as a customer contact, your own motivations and skills are going to vary from day to day. Your mood, your current life situation, your health, and even what you did last night affect your patience levels. If you have a “bad week”, or “bad day” it seems like customers overly picky or nasty, when in fact, they are not being “abnormal”. Your mood affects your perceptions.
If you are lower down in the corporate or company food chain, it’s likely that one or more of the following describe your situation.
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You don’t see the job as permanent, and plan to do greater things, career wise.
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You aren’t being paid a big whack of money to provide customer service.
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You feel overworked and without the support you need to do your job.
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You haven’t received adequate training in dealing with angry difficult customers.
If these apply to you, then it’s no wonder that you get impatient with customers who are intentionally difficult, and even those that are unintentionally annoying. Just hang on a second, though and we’ll get back to your situation.
If you are in a professional type position (e.g. a lawyer in a firm, accountant, software programmer or IT support person), you probably:
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Believe your role is to practice law, or do financial paperwork, or create great software, rather than cater to annoying or difficult customers.
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Have had virtually no training in customer service or worse, in how to deal with angry, and distressed customers and clients.
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Are expected to handle tough situations on your own, since you get paid a fairly healthy wage to do so.
You aren’t going to get much sympathy from most people lower down in the corporate food chain, let’s face it. Most professionals go into their chosen fields because they like the kind of work (e.g. going to court, preparing tax documents, doing certain kinds of analysis) and not because they are eager to be “great customer service representatives”. That doesn’t change the fact that, to succeed, you need customers and the customer/people skills to keep them. You can’t always slough off the responsibility for dealing with irate and nasty clientele to the folks at the bottom of the food chain.
If you are a supervisor, manager or executive, it’s likely that you see yourself as:
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Needing to spend your time on “more important things” and not on dealing with angry or difficult customers.
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Expecting those lower down in the organization to handle and defuse difficult and hostile clientele so they never reach you.
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You probably have no training in how to deal effectively with hostile situations, even if you came from the “floor”. You may, however, believe that by virtue of achieving a management position, you are better at it than you actually are.
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You haven’t dealt regularly and directly with customers so you tend to be out of touch with what’s going on between your staff and the customers. The tendency is to underestimate the frequency and severity of employee-customer clashes and difficulties.
This excerpt is from If It Wasn’t For The Customers I’d Really Like This Job: Stop Angry, Hostile Customers COLD While Remaining Professional, Stress Free, Efficient and Cool As A Cucumber By Robert Bacal
Don’t go away, there’s lots more information, hints and tips from this book. To go straight to the index, click here
