Handling crocodile customers

A barrage of abuse from a customer can be daunting. ANGELA MCCARTHY looks at techniques to stay calm.

Picture this: a crocodile, quietly cruising under water, suddenly pounces for your jugular, all teeth and mouth.

Change the picture slightly: a customer, pottering around your store, suddenly goes for the jugular.

Without warning you have a customer crocodile on your hands, all mouth, shouting abuse with more than a sprinkling of four-letter words. You may even feel physically threatened.

How do you remain professional and cope with such service rage?

It isn't the greatest feeling in the world to have someone shout abuse at you because you're simply trying to do your job.

Yet many customer service staff receive a daily tirade of abuse and anger from dissatisfied people, says Jan Suckling who runs an aptly named "Handling Customer Crocodiles, Snakes and Other Nasties" Auckland Chamber of Commerce course on how to deal with such behaviour.

The course attracts people from a range of organisations including engineering firms, insurance companies, health providers and call centres.

Suckling says over the past 10 years customer service has become a much more difficult area to work in. Managers are demanding better performance, customers are getting more stressed and have higher expectations and staff are on the receiving end of everyone's expectations often without any of the mental paraphernalia required for customer crocodile taming.

So as you head into murky waters, how do you take charge of abusive customers with anger management problems that need controlling?

When the crocodiles are circling, it is essential to stay calm, empathise rather than sympathise and avoid trigger words, says Suckling.

"You can't make them into handbags, like the real thing, so you've got to deal with them some other way. If you stay calm you access higher thinking processes so you can think clearly about the techniques to use."

On her course she teaches a stay calm formula that involves managing your own emotions by detaching and not taking things personally so you are able to manage the emotions of your customer.

"Your aim is to get the customer out of their emotional state into a balanced one where you can do joint problem solving. It is then you get high customer satisfaction."

Managing the customer's emotions is the key, she says.

"The most common emotion is anger and when customers get angry they're not acting logically. They want power and to dominate."

Listening is another important factor.

"When customers are upset they often don't believe they have been or are being listened to. By making communicative listening responses to the tirade coming down the phone line, you're letting them know you're listening - and you can tune out if the abuse gets too much.

"Reflective listening is also essential. Once the customer has stopped, you then reflect what you've heard with comments like, 'Now let's see if I got this straight. You came in here and bought a machine and ... "'.

If people want to rant and rave, let them. It is part of their process and nothing to do with you, Suckling says.

After all, you're not privy to what other things have happened in their day that may have put them in an earlier bad mood. That is all beyond your control, but your own emotions are not.

"That is why the emphasis on the course is managing yourself and your customers' emotions."

Anger is an emotion Tracey Nielsen has to deal with frequently as Best Western membership services coordinator.

The role involves, among other tasks, dealing with guest problems and running inspections of motels around New Zealand to ensure they comply with Best Western's international guidelines.

It is a tough job and feelings can run high when moteliers are told their rooms or service are not up to standard.

Nielsen says the course made her realise she was taking a reactive approach to people, which did nothing to defuse their anger or resolve the situation.

"In the past if I knew I was in the right, I tended to interrupt, point out what is wrong - end of story."

Tips like listening responses have improved her approach heaps, she says. A recent verbal complaint came to nothing and she believes it was because she let the guest complain on the phone without interrupting and with suitable listening responses.

Rephrasing is another technique that Nielsen is finding useful. There is no room for compromise in inspections, says Nielsen, but there are ways to soften the harshness of it.

"Instead of me saying 'this is how it is and you've got no option', Jan encouraged me to think of comments about making choices, helping the brand, that kind of thing. Then the situation is turned around."

Blair Anderson, GE Sheetmetals foreman, has also done the croc course.

"My biggest problem is not listening enough and trying to draw information out of people by talking myself. It taught me better listening techniques and ways to ask more questions," he says.

* The Auckland Chamber of Commerce's "Handling Customer Crocodiles, Snakes and Other Nasties" course is facilitated by Jan Suckling, director of People Bizness Ltd. Next dates: October 29, December 4,

Auckland Chamber of Commerce Training