Do you find difficult customers hard to deal with? Welcome to a very large club, but a club that I would like you to leave. You see, to me, the question of what to say to a porcupine – in other words, how to respond to your most challenging customers – isn’t a matter of luck or even attitude, but rather of technique.
Let’s take a very common example. You probably wake up every morning thinking, correctly, that you are a nice person. But then you come to work and take a call from someone who sounds a little frustrated with a computer problem. You say, “I understand, sir,” and he gets even more upset. Then he makes an unreasonable demand, and you try to tell him very politely that what he wants isn’t possible. He then starts going ballistic and demanding to speak to a supervisor, at which point you escalate him with obvious relief.
You may think that you were done in by a difficult customer, but I disagree. You were done in by linguistics.
In this and subsequent blog entries, I am going to discuss the mechanics of what to say for the four most common “stuck points” in a difficult customer transaction: how to connect with someone in the first 30 seconds, how to deliver bad news, how to avoid simply saying “no” to people, and how to defuse someone’s anger. All of these issues involve specific (and in some cases, fairly recent) techniques taken from modern behavioral psychology, and as a former help desk executive and veteran of 25,000 support calls, I can also say that they work extremely well.
In the process, you will come to see handling difficult support transactions for what it really is: a thoughtfully composed performance that anyone can learn and master, regardless of personality. Let’s start with how you connect with someone, using the example above. You can break this down into three simple rules:
1. Drop the catch phrases “I understand” and “I’m sorry”. 50 years ago, these phrases meant what they said. Today, they are mouthed so often by disengaged service professionals that the average person processes them as “I could care less.” Keep the sentiments, just change the words.
2. Don’t panic – paraphrase. Tomorrow, when you go shopping, dining, or calling for service, pay attention to an interesting dynamic: 98 per cent of the time, no one will acknowledge or paraphrase what you say. But according to psychologists, this is one of the most powerful ways to let people know that you hear them, understand them, and that it is safe to talk about their issue.
In my live training courses I often do a powerful role-playing exercise where one person is angry, and the other person does nothing but paraphrase him or her. It is almost magical to watch the temperature drop, even though no problem-solving has taken place yet. To do it effectively, use you own words to rephrase customer issues, and avoid repeating them back word-for-word.
3. Share your knowledge. In those golden first 30 seconds of a support call, one of the first things a customer – particularly a “porcupine” – is looking for is that warm, fuzzy feeling that someone can help them. Sharing your expertise with forward-looking statements like, “I have seen many problems like this” or “I have some questions that will help us narrow down our focus” shares confidence, and sets you up for a critically important technique we will discuss in a future blog: focusing on what you can do.
To slip in a shameless plug for my friends at Parature, this is one area where CRM can be your best friend. With a customer issue at your fingertips, or a knowledge base of similar solutions, you can quickly become the expert for a wide range of issues. Combined with your communications skills, you can confidently start defusing even the prickliest of porcupines. Stay tuned and welcome your thoughts!
Rich Gallagher is a communications skills expert, author, and former help desk executive. His book What to Say to a Porcupine: 20 Humorous Tales that Get to the Heart of Excellent Customer Service (AMACOM, 2008) was a national #1 customer service and business humor bestseller that was a finalist for the 2008 Business Book Awards, and his latest book How to Tell Anyone Anything (AMACOM, 2009) explores the mechanics of difficult workplace conversations. Visit Rich online at www.pointofcontactgroup.com
Good tidbits
I am very glad to see your blog. You have characterized the very essence of what I try to instill as the first law of sales – sell yourself as being an interesting human being. If you are unable to do this, unless you have an exclusive on the world’s greatest product or you are wildly lucky, neither you nor your company will be in business very long! Mel Reed, My Service and Support
Great article. Thanks for sharing!
Excellent tips, thank you. I would love to read / learn more, any thoughts ?
Just to add my two pennies worth, something that I find works well espl when wrapping up a call (sometimes the most difficult thing is to get off the phone) is summarising the action you will be taking using numbers. For example, Mr Scott here’s what I will be doing to help you,
1) I will …..
2) After that………
3) Finally I will call you back to ……..
Hi Malcolm and Mel, thank you for your kind comments!
William, thanks for asking – although I’ve “branded” this article around my latest book What to Say to a Porcupine, a more detailed discussion of this is in a previous book Great Customer Connections (AMACOM, 2006), which looks at the psychology of how customers react to what we say. P.S. I really like your approach too!
Hello
Customer service experience – good and nice ideas. I’m waiting for the second part on how to connect to people.
I like the start. As a product manager I often get called in to talk to a customer who is having difficulty with the product. The reasons are endless and range from user error/lack of proper training to product error and different combinations of both. I have often been “warned” in advance about the customer’s attitude. So many times I have found that once you convince the customer that you really do care and that you really are listening to them, the call becomes much less about conflict and much more about working together to resolve the issue. So often they just fell like have been shouting into the wind.
Supposed “difficult customer” is an opportunity to assess how good one’s human emotion management is. Understanding the mindset of the customer and relating with them from that position is critical. Frustration could cloud one’s reasoning atimes and often times the “difficult customer” is frustrated. In that position, he/she needs an assurance that his/her frustration could be resolved and quickly too. The service provider must do his/her utmost not to be perceived as part of the problem. Problem resolution is most times, more of human emotion management and less of technolgy issue.
Try keeping a Q-tip handy. When you have a “porcupine” encounter, touch the Q-tip to remind yourself to “Quit Taking It Personally”. This allows you to focus on getting to the issue instead of redirecting your energy into formulating defensive come backs. I have always maintained that angry customers are still talking to you; that means they still want to do business with you. It’s the ones that react with silence that scare me far more, because they’re not talking to you. They’re talking to all their friends!!
Wow, great stuff! I just got back from Parafest ‘09 in Las Vegas a few hours ago, and during my talk there I was hearing a lot of great perspectives like these from the audience too. Often, working with general customer contact teams, the mechanics of what to say is as fresh as the driven snow – and that’s OK too, because they are learning – but you guys are really on point.
James, there is some interesting psychology behind escalation to a manager. Often an angry person will calm down because their problem is being given importance – and because they want to appear to be the “sane” party in the conflict once it reaches a manager – which makes escalation a very strategic tool in spots. And the fact that you understand the roots of customer anger, e.g. a demand for attention, certainly makes it go that much better.
Seyi, if I could boil down what psychologists say about how to communicate in difficult situations, it is to speak from within the mindset of the upset customer – which sounds obvious, but amazingly 20 years ago many communications books were more focused on “selling” your perspective. Today (such as books like “Crucial Conversations” or “Difficult Conversations,” the latter of which was based on the Harvard Negotiation Project) the focus is more on techniques like acknowledgement, validation, chaining agendas to solutions – the mechanics, which are still evolving, are fascinating. I totally agree with your view of the world.
Michelle, what you doing with your Q-tip is what therapists call “reframing” – choosing different terms for what you tell yourself, which in turn affects your words, tone of voice, facial expressions, etc. with the customer. Very cool! And I totally agree that the silent customers who just walk (or complain to others) are the really scary ones.
Hi, nice post. I have been pondering this topic,so thanks for sharing. I will definitely be subscribing to your site.