A Difficult Customer, 3 Secret Ways to Handle them!

“A customer rams into your office and screams at the highest tone for no fault of yours, and your best efforts to explain his misunderstanding goes in deaf ears. You might have personally closed the sale with this customer and chances are that you had explained the terms of the contract well in advance; Still the customer had some newly found complaints”

Yeah! You’ve seen him “THE DIFFICULT CUSTOMER!”

A difficult customer is not necessarily a dissatisfied customer, Unlike a dissatisfied customer, A difficult one blames you in spite of getting service within acceptable standards. Such customers come in all varieties; The Pricky one, The Fault finders, The egoistics, The Constant Complainers, The Know it all’s, The Rude ones,  Angry Ones…and so on. Trust me, Its really easy to handle a difficult customer if you dont take it too personally. Read on, and find the secret.

Secret- 1.  Seat his bottoms

” Yeah! I think it could have been much better for you, Can You please take a seat while I check this for you?”

This is the first step, Take the Blame, The very fact that you have accepted his venom, gets him spent. He generally has nothing more to scream and decides to wait till he plans the next assault.

Secret-2. Pour some coffee over the fire

” I’ve asked the person who dealt with you to report immediately to me, meanwhile would you like to have some coffee?”

Second step, You make him feel important. Honour him with some coffee or atleast a glass of water and acknowledge his points. Make him feel that sorting this issue is priority for you.

Secret -3. Show him the door

“So, I started to sort this out, but Im afraid, its gonna take atleast a day or two. Why dont you get back home while  sort this and get back to you at the earliest? You can also take down my no. I will personally sort this off”

Step three, Promise him some personal care and action and send him back politely. He would look at you as his personal advocate and in most cases would leave the issue to be resolved by you.

A difficult customer, when handled well becomes the most loyal customer and is never difficult again. Ive personally had instances I befriended a difficult customer, and he never complained eversince even when there was a true lapse of Service Delivery Standards. So its worth the trouble. So next time you find a customer complaining, ” Behold the Loyal One”

Robin