How to deal with angry customers

However perfect your service or product quality is, chances are someone will get angry...
By Jane Wei

The question is, how can you make the best of the situation even though you might have no way of knowing what is true and not. Here are some pointers on dealing with angry callers:

First of all you have to tell yourself it's not personal. If you were in this person's shoes and had not received the goods you ordered or a product broke you would probably be just as upset. Most of us taking a call from someone yelling would have the natural tendency to start defending ourselves or our company, but that will just pour oil on the flames and won't solve anything. So be quiet and listen. This is the most important part. Try to get as much information as possible and then tell the customer that you will research the issue and get back to them in 10 minutes.

Then you have to find out what has gone wrong and find a way to make it right. And even if you don't have a finished answer in 10 minutes, call them back anyway and tell them that. This simple act will help tell the customer that you are trustworthy and is taking him or her seriously.

Do what you can to make things right for the customer while honoring the customer's dignity and your company's budget and principles.
With research and a certain degree of candidness, most cases a situation can be defused with both sides being satisfied. Even if you find out that it is the customer that has made a mistake, you have to ask yourself, would you rather be right or have a continued relationship with your customer?

Which brings us to the next point; Everyone's a sales person! Every company is spending lots of money and efforts on figuring out how to get in touch with their customers to sell them new products or upgrades. What they often ignore is the customer service department. This is a situation where the customer themselves have call YOU, in a way it's a free sales opportunity, an extra chance to increase the revenue from this client and tie them closer to your company. The first part of this is of course to offer good service. They have a problem, you solve it, they get happy. Then you can say something like "as an apology for this issue, I am authorized to offer you 25% off on an upgrade if you choose to purchase it today." Of course you have to make sure that the customer service rep or receptionist get training and can answer the customers' questions regarding the offer, but it is a very efficient way to turn what is usually considered an expense into an investment.

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