Approaching the Irate Customer

Me, an Irate Customer? Never!

By: Jen Kuhn

Everyone I work with has had the unfortunate experience of having to deal with an irate customer at some point in their career.  This is inevitable.  For every hundred customers that are easy-going, understanding and friendly, there is one customer lurking in the shadows just waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting employee. And the employee never sees it coming!

An angry, irate customer experience often reminds one of a National Geographic documentary of lions attacking a herd of antelope.  You can hear the commentator whispering in the background, usually with a British accent, “Look, as the unsuspecting employees go about their daily business, smiling and greeting customers.  They are feeling safe in their natural habitat called, “the workplace”.  But wait!  There seems to be a change in the air.  Blimey.  What’s this?  A new customer has entered the pack.  He slowly makes his way through the customer line, eyeing each delicate morsel, umm, I mean employee, as he gets closer to the front.  Sally, one of the newer employees of the pack, smiles brightly as she calls out, “I’d be happy to help the next person”.  Silly, silly Sally.”

And the story gets more predictable from there: with clenched fists the irate customer angrily raises his voice and lets Sally know that your company has made a huge mistake!  Not only that, it happened once, back in 1971, too.  And, to top it off, you never have any parking spaces available!  As he seethes through gritted teeth, and Sally wipes his spittle from her face, others in the pack look at the attack scene.  Being true pack-mates, they think empathically, “Phew, I’m glad Sally waited on him instead of me.”

I admit that it’s not a pretty sight when a reasonable adult loses all sense of appropriate social behaviors when they feel that they have been wronged by a business.  It’s frustrating and upsetting to everyone involved.  Yet there are some sure fire ways of handling an irate customer that will de-escalate the situation and prevent a power struggle from occurring.  And unfortunately, unlike the National Geographic documentaries, tranquilizer guns are not involved.

Before we begin looking at the steps of handling an irate customer, we first must identify with one.  Yes, we’ve all been that angry customer at some business.  Think about it.  Let’s try an experiment.  I would like you to think of a time when you were upset with a business.  You were the customer, and in some way, the business did not live up to your expectations or they did something that was just flat out wrong.  Can you think of a time like this?  It may have been at a restaurant, a store, the mechanics, over the phone with your cell phone provider, etc.  (I’ve got a few experiences you can borrow if you’re struggling).  OK, now that I’ve got you in a bad mood, I want you to think of two words or phrases that describe how you felt when you were dealing with that business or a particular employee at that business.  Take a moment to write those on a piece of paper.

When you look at those words or phrases, they probably sound something like, “angry and upset”, or “ignored and helpless”, or “frustrated and homicidal”.  Or maybe you wrote a phrase such as, “I had to ask for a supervisor just to get anything accomplished”, or “I had to repeat myself a thousand times just to get anyone’s attention and make them understand the situation”, or “I am now wanted in the state of California”.  Whatever the words or phrases you wrote down, I’m sure they are not flattering to the business or to your state of mind at the time the problem occurred.  Of course not!  You were upset and no one seemed to understand you or want to fix the problem to your satisfaction.

Now, I would like to ask, did you think you were correct or right when you were dealing with that business?  Quit nodding your head like that, you’ll give yourself whiplash.  Of course you thought you were right; that’s what made you so upset.

Final question…do you still think you were right?  Yep, that’s what I thought.

OK.  After that brief experiment, you can now identify with the irate customer.  The words or phrases an irate customer would choose when discussing their personal disputes with your company are most likely quite similar to the words or phrases you wrote down.  They also thought they were right.  And in all likelihood, they still think they were right, even if you showed them where they made an error.  What is wrong with them?!  Oh, the same thing that’s wrong with us!  This is how most people respond in situations with a business when they don’t completely understand what happened, why certain things are rules of that business, or when they are not completely satisfied with what they thought should happen.

Let’s just recap a recent travel experience I had.  Now, I have a few arguments with the current “liquid restrictions”, but I’m willing to go along with it.  The real tragedy rests in the fact that I cannot be accompanied by my hair care products.  It’s so lonely without my friends, Paul Mitchell and Kenra # 25.  But I’m getting over it.

Recently, I decided I would not take any “checked” luggage.  What that means in terms of travel is that I’m going to have really bad hair.  It also means that I have to squeeze three tiny ounces of every hair care product I own into tiny little containers that must then somehow fit into a one quart plastic baggie.  First of all, that is way too much math.  It’s like a word problem on crack.  “If Jen is traveling for 1,200 miles on an airplane going 480 miles an hour, how long will it be before she realizes she forgot to pack something?”  Additionally, who came up with the plastic baggie rule?  Clearly, not a hairdresser.

I consider myself a friendly customer of the TSA officials.  I go through the security routine like a champ, and I do not complain or have a metal plate in my head that might cause unnecessary alarm.  Yet for some reason, I occasionally encounter an employee who not only hates their job, they seem to hate me AND my hair.

Let me elaborate.  For the security check, I begin unpacking the bags I just packed.  I place my over-stuffed plastic baggie with its content of 78 tiny three ounce containers into the bin.  I proudly admire my army of hair care products and pat myself on the back for managing to travel so lightly.  Ah, savor the moment.

Not five seconds later, that baggie was confiscated like a note being passed by a third grader.  The TSA employee who snagged my hair care products evidently was The Baggie Enforcer.  She was like the “Uncle Vito” of baggie violations.  I’m lucky she didn’t break my arm.  I’m totally confused.  I wanted to yell, “I followed the rules of your stupid little game, so don’t take my shampoo.”  But that just sounded stupid, even to me.  As calmly as I can be while The Baggie Enforcer is precariously close to spilling my 78 tiny three ounce containers all over the floor, I ask her if there is a problem.  She states, with military precision, “You have used a one gallon plastic baggie which violates the one quart plastic baggie rule.”  Oh the humanity!

The Baggie Enforcer then grabs a regulation-sized one quart baggie and shoves it in my direction, saying that I can keep whatever fits into it.  Now she’s smiling.  I’m thinking, “OK Satan, I’ll take your little baggie challenge.  My hair care products are on the line, and I will not leave this state without them.”  My new motto became, “No hair care product shall be left behind.”  Through some sort of baggie miracle, I was able to stuff everything into that tiniest of baggies!  I nearly did a special baggie victory dance but kept myself in check to avoid possible jail time.  Truth be told, the baggie did not close; but at this point she would have looked ridiculous debating this minor technicality.

Now, when I reconsider the event, despite being victorious I qualified as an irate baggie traveler.  I thought I’d done what I was supposed to do by using the clear plastic baggie.  I simply misunderstood, or mistakenly used the incorrect sized baggie.  I did not see the big deal, or the international threat that could ensue if I actually had good hair once in a while.  But The Baggie Enforcer sure took my over-sized baggie as a huge security risk.  And to give her credit, that’s her job.  But it doesn’t mean she did all parts of her job well as far as me and my baggie were concerned.  Sure, she spotted the “non-regulation sized baggie” with her super-human-baggie-measuring-eyes.  But how she reacted was a bit over the top.  A simple statement that I’d used a baggie that was larger than what they allowed would have had me groveling for forgiveness…or at least groveling in order to keep my stuff.  Instead, she went into attack mode, and spoke in a manner that just reeked of power and control issues.  Yes, she was right (see, I can even write that in a sentence).  But she handled the situation poorly.

So, how can we handle situations that we encounter when we are at work?  I’ll concede that you are usually correct, and that the customer does not understand the why’s and how’s of the situation.  That makes sense to me, you are the professional and you have a better understanding of how your system works.  But even having said that, it doesn’t matter who is right!  The only two things that matter when dealing with an irate customer is (drum roll please): 1. Repair the relationship, and 2. Retain the relationship.  Yep, that’s it.  Repair and Retain.  Nothing about proving them wrong, or telling them to calm down.  Our goal is much simpler than that.  We should approach every irate customer with this in mind, “My goal is to repair this customer’s feelings about our company so that we can retain their relationship with us.”  This would probably change our approach to the customer, and at the least, it would help diminish our defensiveness.  I’ll admit, it’s much more fun to chant, “I told you so, I told you so” when it’s all said and done, but that really won’t help the situation.

I’ve detailed an approach that will work for you the next time you encounter an irate customer.  This approach will not only calm the customer down faster than you can say, “Calm down or I won’t help you”; it will also ensure that both the customer and the employee feel better about the entire interaction.  No, I meant it when I said it before, this does not involve a tranquilizer gun.

There are 3 steps to utilize when dealing with an irate customer.

1. Apologize
2. Empathize
3. Solve

Apologize

Apologize?  What?!  Yes, that is the first step.  Please consider that when you apologize, you are not admitting fault nor are you placing blame.  You are simply sorry the situation occurred.  And if you think about it, no truer statement could be said!  You are sorry it happened, because if it hadn’t happened, they wouldn’t be yelling at you!  See, nothing wrong with that.

So this may sound something like:

• “Sir, I am so sorry for this situation.”
• “Ma’am, I am sorry you are in such a difficult situation right now.”
• “I apologize for the miscommunication/misunderstanding.”
• “I’m really sorry I showed up for work today.”

The key is to remember that you are simply apologizing that something has occurred which is causing the customer to be upset with your company.  No finger pointing, no blaming.  Just apologize.

Empathize

The second step is to empathize with the customer.  Empathy is simply a way of letting the customer know that you heard them, that you understand they have feelings.  It’s a chance to put yourself in the customers’ shoes.  Empathy is never saying, “I know how you feel.”  Even when we’ve had a similar situation as someone else, we never truly know how they feel about it.  We all experience our feelings differently.

So this may sound something like:

• “I understand that you are really upset.”
• “I can hear that you are very angry and frustrated right now.”
• “This is an upsetting and difficult situation.”
• “Stinks to be you.”

Once we express empathy, a customer may temporarily escalate.  They may say something like, “You’re darn right I’m mad!  I shouldn’t have to continue spending time dealing with this situation!  Wouldn’t you be mad?”  At this point, a simple restatement of empathy will allow you to keep moving forward.

You might consider saying:

• “Absolutely!  If I felt like I was wasting my time, I’d be upset, too.”
• “I understand this entire situation has caused you to become really angry.”
• “It’s reasonable to be angry when you have to spend your personal time on this issue.”
• “Seriously…I could just press delete and say buh-bye to you.”

In the end, you are not agreeing with their assessment of the situation, only the feeling they attach to it.  Think about when you were the angry customer.  Did it help when someone told you to calm down?  What works for you in these situations will also work for your customers.  What a business says or does that furthers your frustrations, also tends to further the frustration of our customers when we employ similar tactics.

We sometimes jump straight to the solution, and can’t seem to understand why the customer is still angry.  This is usually because they want an apology, and they want to know you understand them.  Hey, if that’s all they want, let them have it!  It will make your job easier, and they’ll be more likely to allow you to peacefully research the problem.  So, once you’ve apologized and empathized, you and the customer are better prepared for the final step…

Solve

Once you’ve apologized and empathized, you can now work towards a solution.  The customer will be ready for you to help them because by using the first two steps, you’ve let them know that you are on their side.  You can even say that to them!

The solution may sound something like:

• “I’m going to do everything possible to help you with this situation.”
• “I’d like to begin looking up your account, because I think I may be able to find out more about what’s going on with your account.”
• “It will only take a few minutes to straighten this out.  Is it ok if I ask you a few questions so I may begin to get this resolved for you?”
• “Let me get my manager.”

Combining all 3 of these steps would sound something like:

“Sir, I am so sorry for this situation.  I understand and can see that you are angry and frustrated.  I’d like to ask you a few questions so I can resolve this for you as quickly as possible.”

Yes, I agree, dealing with irate customers can be very challenging.  But it is possible to employ these three steps and see more effective results.  Sometimes you may have to repeat the apology and empathy steps, but that’s ok.  If our goal is to repair and retain the relationship, then it’s easier to understand why those steps are so important to the customer.

We’ve all been that irate person at some time or another in our consumer lives.  The better you can identify with the customers’ experience of being irate, the easier it will be for you to handle them in an effective manner.  No one wants to be upset and angry when they come to into your company, so give these steps a whirl.  And as my sweet grandmother used to say, “Kill them with kindness dear…either way, killing is involved.”