It’s easy to label a customer as difficult, but the question is: Are they difficult, or are they just frustrated? The truth is that dealing with complaining customers should be approached delicately – it’s not enough just to train employees on customer service.
Customer care is central to the customer experience. More often than not, when a customer complains, it is about the experience being less than satisfactory. But taking care of the customer means that you are building a relationship with them, one where you can (just as with any other relationship) be honest and address concerns respectfully. It also makes sincere feedback about positive aspects easier.
Correctly Handling Customers Is a Part of Reputation Management
Correctly addressing customer complaints or dealing with difficult customers has a direct impact on your business’s reputation. If a complaint is dealt with promptly and professionally, it shows that your company takes clientéle seriously and respects their concerns.
Being dismissive and labelling frustrated customers as “difficult” creates the impression that you don’t care about your customers. If one of them writes a bad review or shares with other people that you don’t care about them, this can severely impact your reputation.
Now that you understand why it is important to address difficult customers correctly, let’s unpack how to establish guidelines for dealing with them.
Understanding “Difficult” Customers
Before you can establish guidelines for handling difficult customers, here are some of the types of customers you may encounter.
1. Frequent Complainer: This person expresses their every thought without hesitation. Whether it is a regular caller to the customer support desk, a familiar name in the reviews, or even on social media.
2. Difficult to Satisfy: This customer always finds something wrong, no matter the level of customer experience. Their feedback can be valuable as it provides a lot of insight into specific parts of the business’s product or service.
3. Ready to Leave: These individuals have expressed interest in switching to your competitor’s product or service, and keeping them is the key here. Especially if they have submitted complaints previously that were unaddressed
4. Indecisive Customers: They are the people who can’t clearly communicate what exactly they are looking for. Do they need help using your product or service? Do they understand the product or service? Often, they won’t have any concrete suggestions, questions or even solutions.
5. Unrealistic Expectations: These customers believe your product or service is the magic solution to their problem, except it doesn’t. And that upsets them. Either because the price is too high, functionality too complicated, features too few… the list goes on.
You and your staff should be able to identify these characteristics and understand what kind of customer you are dealing with. This will help you to determine how you will deal with each client.
Steps to Dealing with Customers
Guidelines are the parameters you set for interacting with customers. These go beyond the standard skills and expectations, such as always looking professional, greeting customers politely and assisting them with general queries.
1. Have a Policy in Place
Whether you call it a guide or a policy, ensure you have an outline of how you expect staff to address and handle difficult clients. In fact, it should be a section in your overall customer service policy
This policy is essentially a code of conduct that all staff need to adhere to when addressing customers. The idea is to empower your staff to handle every situation that they encounter, as well as equip them to escalate the situation to a manager if need be.
The policy should aim to address any possible situation: queries, handling returns, onboarding clients, directing requests about their accounts or statements, or even addressing complaints. It is best to have these guidelines written down so employees may refer back to them at any time.
2. Take Ownership of the Problem
The nature of dealing with customers means that you cannot postpone the problem – you must tackle it head-on.
Femi Adebanji, author, customer service speaker, trainer and consultant, previously advised: “If the fault lies with our employees or us, then we need to step up and take complete ownership. Nothing is more frustrating and irritating for a customer than having a genuine problem or having a valid concern and then being given the runaround. Customers respect and appreciate when businesses take ownership of their problems and make themselves accountable for resolving such problems.”
Therefore, even when you don’t feel like it, address the problem as soon as possible. Take ownership of it and help the client.
3. Sincerity, Honesty and Empathy are Crucial
Because a lot of difficult customers are often only frustrated customers, it’s vital to approach their frustrations with empathy, honesty and sincerity. Dealing with them in person means that your verbal and non-verbal communication (such as your facial expressions) should communicate this too.
Listen to their concern, acknowledge their feelings and frustrations, and explain clearly how you are going to rectify the situation.
4. Set Clear Expectations
One thing that can be a huge setback is to help the client, but create unrealistic expectations that leave them even more upset.
When assessing what their problem is, confirm with them if you are understanding correctly. Next, find the possible solution. Use your knowledge of the business to find the correct solution for their specific problem. Clearly explain to them what steps you will be taking to fix the problem. If you cannot completely resolve the problem, communicate that upfront.
5. Plan for the Difficult Customer
Unfortunately, life happens, and as much as you try to please the customer, there will always be something that is out of your control. That is why it is important to prepare for the worst.
Have a thorough policy in place and train staff to be prepared for any possible scenario, either in-person or by addressing bad reviews.
What does a customer do when they ordered the wrong size or colour? Can they return or exchange a product? To ensure you offer clients the best possible service, a business should also pay attention to its returns process. Read more about it in our article Customer Returns: The Logistics Behind Return Management.
