This is a tricky question that has gone hand in hand with customer service probably since its birth: When a client gets angry, starts yelling and behaving in an almost aggressive manner, what should the company rep do? On the one hand, the “customer is always right” rule applies, but on the other it is not possible to tolerate intolerable behaviour on the part of the customer. Here are several pieces of advice on how you should behave if the client starts yelling at you.
Do not try to say the client to calm down
The first rule that the CustomerThink website gives is you should give the customer time to calm down by themselves. The client is angry, is yelling and no matter whether his/her claims are justifiable or not, there are only two things that can happen next. Either the client will cool down himself and it will again by possible to talk to them, or the customer will stay angry, maybe because it is his nature, and here it will not help to ask the client to calm down. On the contrary, it might anger the client even more. So leave out the sentence “Calm down, please”, focus on different methods on calming the client down.
From the whole to the details
A very efficient way of calming the client down is, first of all, to express your understanding and your wish to find a solution together. This will put both of you “on the same wavelength”, instead of being in opposition. Then, you need to go from the whole to the details. Cut the customer from seeing the overall situation as angering, and make his/her mind busy with concrete and constructive thoughts by dividing the problem into individual parts and small tasks that you work on together. The customer then often starts focusing on partial details and will forget about the anger.
Express understanding
As it has been said above, what is most important is making it clear to the client that you do not take their complaints lightly and that you understand their anger. Also, you must thank them for the incentive at the end and tell them that the remarks will be used to perfect your current services.
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