Why Are They Angry?
Do you own you own business?
Are you a beginner or have you been an online digital marketer for a while?
Either way, you will probably deal with your customers at some point and they may be quite upset about something related to your business…
How do you deal with a difficult or angry customer?
Crossed arms, heavy sighs, short replies….
You know when a customer is getting frustrated, and the worse part is you know they are losing interest in what you’re saying and your shot at keeping their business is fading fast.
Most often, difficult or angry customers aren’t expressing frustration with you. Their emotions are due to external situations and psychological stimuli. You will need to put your great communication skills to work and draw on your superpower of reading the situation.
Here are seven psychological tips for managing difficult customers to save your customer’s anger and frustration from simmering:
How to Deal with Difficult Customers
1. Practice reflective listening
When you’re upset it doesn’t help when someone says they understand. This kind of broad statement doesn’t accomplish anything. Instead, practice reflective listening. This approach requires you to understand what the other person is saying by interpreting their words and their body language (which is difficult for us online entrepreneurs as we may not be face-to-face with our customer). Then respond by reflecting the thoughts and feelings you heard back to your customer.
If you have truly understood their feelings and words, move on. If not, say “Tell me more, so I can better understand”.
Never promise to fix the situation, because you may not be able to. Your goal at this moment is to make your customer feel heard and valued.
2. Consider their affect heuristic (Feeling or emotional questioning)
The affect heuristic is a type of mental shortcut in which people make decisions that are heavily influenced by their current emotions. Essentially, your affect (a psychological term for emotional response) plays a critical role in the choices and decisions you make. These decisions are based on how you feel toward the person, place, or situation you’re considering. Basically, it’s our bias.
Your customer may have been in a similar situation with another vender or business in the past and is now viewing you through the same lens.
Ask questions to help you understand the root cause of their worry or hesitation. The following questions can help your customer to relax and help you to understand why they are having the issue:
• “I’d like to understand. Tell me more about why you’re (mad, skeptical, hesitant, etc.)”
• “What can I do to relieve your fears?”
• “How can I help you to feel comfortable enough to…”
These questions also redirect their mind from thinking you’re untrustworthy to proactively considering what they need on order to move forward.
3. Tap into the beginner’s mind
The beginner’s mind is the strategy of approaching every situation as if you were a beginner. When you adopt this way of thinking, you enter every conversation with the “don’t know” mind, keeping you from prejudging a customer or their situation.
It also encourages you to live without the “Shoulds”. These are nagging thoughts like:
• The customer should have already known they wouldn’t have budget until next quarter
• The customer should have read my email about their discount expiration
• The customer should not have assumed I would be available for weekly consultations
“Shoulds” put you on the defensive and jeopardize the productivity of the conversation before it even begins.
4. Let go of fear
Fear of a negative outcome drives many of our reactions. Fear makes us want to control things. If a customer is being difficult, we’re afraid to challenge them because we might risk the relationship. If they express displeasure with your timeline or pricing, we’re afraid we might not be able to fix the situation.
First, let go of the idea you need to fix anything. When you’re with a difficult customer, your job is to listen, understand and determine the next steps, not to immediately produce a solution.
Instead of apologizing and slapping together a mediocre fix or validating feelings, say:
“Its’s unfortunate X happened. I am aware of how this is affecting your business, and I appreciate your patience as I work to resolve this matter.”
5. “Chunk” the problem
Chunking is the process of taking one big problem and breaking it into several smaller, more manageable portions. These small portions are easier to handle, and make us more willing to begin dealing with the issue at hand.
Many people use chunking to organize their daily tasks, and its very helpful when managing challenging problems.
Example: If your customer always has a reason not to set up their account and get started using your software, ask them to help you break down each of the final steps you need to take to get things moving.
6. Remember, anger is natural
Ever throw out a price or time investment required and watch your customer get frustrated or even angry at how high it is? Or maybe you’ve been on the other side; A customer tells you how much they want to pay for your new product upgrade, and it’s so low it makes you mad.
The Recalibration Theory of Anger says this emotion is naturally wired into humans. Anger is our evolutionary way of bargaining. We furrow our brows, press our lips together, and flare our nostrils om to drive our “opponent” to place a higher value on what we offer.
Example: When faced with an angry customer, avoid the natural tendency to justify your position. Instead, understand they’re merely feeling undervalued and attempting to control the situation.
Take your customer’s frustration seriously, but not personally. Remain calm, and actively listen to what you customer says. When you’ve confirmed you understand their frustration, thank them for communicating it and tell them you’ll get back to them with a solution.
When a customer is angry, it’s possible no solution with make them feel better. Give them time to cool off, and use the list of tips (to come in a latter email).
7. Keep calm and carry on
Conflict is a part of business; how you react under fire impacts the future of you customer relationships.
The adage “the customer is always right” is still true. You have far more to lose by taking the low road and stooping to a customer’s level of hostility. Treating someone with distain or disrespect reflects negatively on you and your business, so reputation management should always be at the top of your mind.
Remember people will often mirror the emotional signals you give off. If you respond with hostility and anger, don’t expect friendliness and understanding in return.
Those of us who are online digital marketers will recognize this article was written for businesses where most interactions are face-to-face.
However, they can be utilized in our online business with a few tweaks here and there.
Tomorrow, part two will be “How to Deal with Angry Customers”. It is similar but has some unique differences we will look at in detail.
I appreciate you and wish you have a wonderful and productive day.
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