This is a true story. The names have been changed to protect the protagonists …
Just recently, while staying at a friends house while they travelled, I had to wait for a new pool pump to be installed (the old one had broken down under warranty.)
Days went by and there was no communication from the company involved.
Meanwhile the pool was getting greener and the weather hotter.
My 12 year old son was waiting to have a swim but couldn’t because of the state of the pool.
I rang the company and spoke to the owner. She seemed quite cranky when i asked her what was happening to the pump.
After much to and fro-ing, the guy finally arrived to install the new (replacement) pump. As the guy was fitting it, he discovered another problem with a valve. He told me that he would ensure the owner of the business would call me re fitting the extra valve. By 11.00 am the following morning there had been no call so I rang them.
When I expressed my frustration, the owner lost her temper.
I told he that I wrote training packages on customer service, but she kept right on talking.
I said ‘but I’m the customer!’
She didn’t hear me but finished up by saying “we’ve gone out of our way for you.” She clearly hadn’t. She then hung the phone up and I was left feeling a little bit (not a lot) unhappy. Because I train in these areas I thought about how she must have felt. Stressed, unappreciated and just plain angry.
Dealing with difficult customers is something all business people need to do with the one aim of keeping the customer happy, because every angry customer tells another 10 people and so on.
Try this:
Depersonalise and strategise
Listen
Come up with solutions
Make a friend of an enemy …
and they will tell 10 people how great you are.
The issue is that many people in business don’t have any training in these areas.
They do take things personally.
Things go wrong. That’s natural.
But if you handle the situation calmly and strategically you make many friends.
