If you followed the advice on how to give superlative treatment to your customers, you must have done a lot to make your customers happy and you have many more satisfied customers. However, sometimes you are faced with some difficult and troublesome customers. When you encounter these kinds of customers you need to be careful how you deal with them so that it doesn’t backfire on your business.
I want to give you a few tips on how to handle such customers.
1. Patience: Patience they say is a virtue. As a business owner you will need a lot of this virtue because you will come across different kinds of customers. When you encounter a troublesome customer, try and exercise some patients. It can be a hard thing to be patient with such people but it is worthy to do. Becoming impatient with customers is very unprofessional (even if they are argumentative and demanding) because they are only trying to get a resolution to their problems.
2. Be positive: One of the characteristics of successful people is that they have a lot of positive attitude. Their outlook of life and people is on the positive side. They believe that every situation will in the long run turn out to be good and beneficial to them. Even if the stress of a situation is getting you down and becoming unbearable, you must endeavour to maintain a positive outlook at all times. Negativity will only result in increasing the hostility of a troublesome customer even further.
3. Be A Good Listener: Practice being a good listener, it will help you to uncover customers’ needs and challenges. Try to listen more than you actually speak to disgruntled customers. When you listen carefully you will be able to understand what the actual grievances of your customers are and you are more likely to be able to solve their problem.
4. Avoid Argument: When you argue with a person you are not likely to listen to each other. Each person will take a position and stand by it. As a business owner who wants to resolve any problem you must avoid argument with your customers. Whatever you do, don’t argue back with a customer, regardless of what they say or the accusations they make. Argument will lead to confrontation will in turn make the situation worse.
5. Politely Discard: Not all customers can be satisfied. Some are so difficult that they will never see reasons with you or with the help you try to render. When you deal with such customers, evaluate the situation to see if it is really worth it. If it is not it is better you let that customer go. But be polite and skillful in handling such issue.
These are just a few ways to deal with difficult customers. You can also employ these same skills in dealing with your staff and even in other areas of your life and relationships.
Do you know any other way of dealing with troublesome customers? Please, share your opinion in the comment area
In dealing with difficult customers, we must learn to manage our customers’ customer service expectations. Every customer has an expectation when they step into our premises; but such an expectation must be tailored to what you know you can offer them. Firstly, we must build a reputation for making and keeping clear promises to our customers. Secondly, we should learn the technique of ‘under promise but over deliver’. Simply put, make conservative promises even when you know you can exceed them; so that when you eventually exceed them just as you know you will, the customer is surprisingly happy.
Finally, we must learn to acknowledge our customers’ frustration about events or services but not necessarily agreeing with them. Show them empathy but skilfully point them in the direction of your customer service offerings. Promise to look into their complaints but not guaranteeing them any solution that is not in line with your company’s standards.
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