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True Questions from the Front Lines of Customer Support and the Answers from Rich Gallagher

The webinar “Getting Your Worst Customers to Love You: True Tales from the Front Lines of Customer Support” was attended by hundreds of customer service and support professionals who submitted numerous questions for Rich G. during and prior to the webinar. Due to the time constraints of the event, Rich was unable to answer all of those great questions; however he has been gracious enough with his time to answer each and every one which we are posting in a two part series here. Read first part here.

Whether you attended the webinar or not, you may find that Rich’s answers to these questions may also help you turn your challenging customer situations into positive customer experiences.

Congratulations to Rick Bruce, Jason Lorenz and L. Graves who submitted the winning stories for a copy of Rich Gallagher’s latest book “How to Tell Anyone Anything: Breakthrough Techniques for Handling Difficult Conversations at Work.”

If you did not attend the webinar, we invite you to watch it now. Share your thoughts and continue the discussion here.

Q&A Part 2

We provide technical support via the phone. I would love to hear about handling difficult customers on the phone as customers on the phone seem more hostile than in person.

Our members often use quite derogatory language about us personally. Please discuss best practices for lower level staff to help deal with these situations.

How do you handle customers who are having a bad day that just need someone to yell at?

How do I handle customers who are just mean and nasty?

I am going to answer all of these very common scenarios as a group. First, use the best acknowledgements you possibly can, including paraphrasing their concerns. When customers get meaner and nastier over the life cycle of a transaction, you usually aren’t acknowledging them effectively, which triggers more pressure. That said, I have no problem whatsoever with setting boundaries when customers cross the line from upset to abusive – consider phrases such as “I would like to help you, but you will need to stop screaming at me.”
-Rich

As a non-profit organization that signs up people for monthly donations, we occasionally receive calls from donors that were not aware they were donating more than one-time.  How do you recommend handling such situations i.e. refunds, retention, etc.?

Very good question. No communications skills can absolve people from acting on the moral high ground. When someone felt they were making a one-time donation, the only proper response is to apologize and, if needed, return the unexpected donation. And if this happens often, review your procedures to examine why people misunderstand your process.
-Rich

What about the frustrated customer who wants to “jump” to a supervisor?

I am generally in favor of escalation on demand – particularly when you use your systems (like Parature) to analyze why calls need to escalate, and respond strategically. Incidentally, I am also in favor of talented peers serving as a path of escalation where appropriate, particularly where the issue is expertise rather than managerial authority.
-Rich

We offer a free service that we actually pay them money for at the end.  People say they have to think about it.  How do you break through that barrier?

Think like your customer – or better yet, ask them. What is making them skeptical? Is there a trust issue? Is the reward worth their effort? Do they need what you are offering? Then keep workshopping your pitch until it addresses these issues.
-Rich

In higher Ed we deal with PHD’s who feel they are entitled to service from only someone they consider their equal, but they are basically computer knowledge low.  They talk down to you – how do we respond getting them to buy into the fact we can help them?

I know exactly the dynamic you are talking about, Dennis -  I grew up in an academic family and began my career on a campus help desk. (My late father, a university president, often cited Henry Kissinger’s quote that “academic politics are the nastiest, because the stakes are so low.”)

You need to establish credibility with these people, and you can do this by (a) doing a good job of articulately paraphrasing (*not* parroting) their concerns, (b) giving very detailed responses, and (c) summarizing the action items at the end of the transaction. Each of these techniques make you pro-active rather than reactive, and help you establish an equal business posture. And finally, bite your lip and acknowledge Dr. Wonderful’s expertise wherever appropriate.
-Rich

How do you suggest that we educate customers who “just want someone to answer the phone and solve their problem in real time” when we really don’t have the bandwidth for that model?

Here is a phrase I’ve often used: “We want you to have a good experience using our software – and in particular, we want you to have a better experience than we can give you pushing information at you one word at a time over the telephone. So we have some great training (or resources, or consulting, etc.) options for you.”
-Rich

What about handling “internal” customers, working for the same company; same rules?

Yes, but with one big difference. You work with internal customers every day, so your focus must shift from managing a transaction to building a relationship. For example, instead of just defusing a conflict, you want to go further and explore what will make this person happy in the future. Good question on an important topic, I actually devoted a whole chapter to this in my book Great Customer Connections.
-Rich

How do I effectively deal with members who resent a change in our program? Basically, we promised a service forever and now have changed it so it is only guaranteed for one-year at a time.

How can I satisfy those members who wish for the member benefits to always remain the same (but staff, board members, and membership majority) decided to change the benefits?

I’ll answer both of these common issues together. First, lean into their complaints and acknowledge them – “Yes, that was a good benefit package. And I appreciate your taking the step of letting us know how important that was for you.” Second, frame the change in a way that benefits the customer – “We made this change in hopes of holding prices constant for people, while keeping our most popular benefits.” Third, take a learning posture – “I am glad you called, because if enough people still want to keep the benefits they had, that is important feedback for us.”
-Rich

How do you tell a customer that the EFT/WIRE was not submitted on time and that there will be a delay in processing funds transfer?

Lean into the customer’s frustration – openly acknowledge how this is affecting the customer, every time they open their mouth – and then focus on the solution.
-Rich

“Continue as needed to control the conversation”???? Wow–that feels like the opposite of a great customer experience. How do you build a relationship when you see customers are something that need to be controlled? Do you want the talker to “feel” like you are paying attention….or do you pay attention? Big difference…

Good point Molly. In my experience, customers come away much *happier* when you use the “acknowledging close” technique to move the conversation along, because you are engaging them – versus what most people do, which is sit there going “uh-huh” endlessly when overly-talkative customers ramble on and on. This is actually one of the more consistently successful techniques I use in making customers feel good.

Finally, to answer what I sense is the question behind your question – I agree with you, no communications techniques will compensate for a genuine lack of empathy for the customer. In this case, of course you want to both pay attention AND make it clear to the customer that you are doing so – that was the point of that bullet item.
-Rich

I think that the most important thing is have empathy with all the customers.

Yes!! And the second most important thing is to use the right language so that customers feel that empathy.
-Rich

My favorite bit of advice is to ALWAYS remember the customer is complaining TO you, not ABOUT you.

Absolutely Mellissa. You are using a powerful technique from psychology here called “reframing.” When I was a young support rep, I used to think of myself as a psychologist studying the tribal behavior of early computer users, not just someone who was being yelled at.
-Rich

What was that third acknowledgement? Observation, validation and ?

Identification. Observation is where you observe the other person’s response (“I can tell you are pretty upset about this”), validation means letting someone know their feelings are valid (“No one likes to wait for a service call”), and identification means sharing your own feelings (“I wouldn’t like that either.”)
-Rich

Finally, to give credit where credit is due, many of the original issues we discussed in the webinar are documented in SupportIndustry.com and Parature’s 2009 Service & Support Metrics Survey.

Thanks everyone for a great webinar!
Rich