I deal with angry customers on the phone. How can I get them to stop talking at me, and start listening?
If you deal with difficult or angry customers on the phone, you know that the biggest problem is that they tend to go on and on, don’t listen, and hog the conversation, which means you can’t get a word in edgewise. This consumes lots of time, and of course, it’s hard to help a customer who won’t let you talk. There’s a simple technique that you can use on the phone to get the customer to stop talking. It’s called “telephone silence”. Here’s the summary from The Defusing Hostile Customers Workbook
Like any kind of conversation, conversations over the telephone have rules. One of those rules is that when one person is talking, the other person sends signals to the “talker” that they are listening, and still there. This is necessary because the parties can’t see each other. The only way to know there is a person on the other end is if the other person makes some sort of noise, usually “yes”, “uh-huh”, “I understand”, etc. Consistent with our self-defense principles, you do not want to follow this rule. The best way to get a person to stop talking on the phone is simply to say nothing at all. If you can avoid breathing into the phone, or if you can exclude any noise getting through from your end, this is even better. Eventually, the person on the other end will stop, and say something like “Hello, hello, are you there?”, and pause for a moment. This gives you the opportunity to say something at the invitation of the caller.
