Angry Customers

Summary: Hey! This is Mike Cowles from www.epicmarketer.com and today we're gonna talk about how to deal with an angry customer in a productive way. So let's jump right in. First, angry customers are not necessary a reflection of you or you're business or service. Life is tough sometimes. People having a rough day. Maybe a link didn't go to where they expected it to. Maybe they misunderstood something or had a false expectation when they saw your particular offer. So one of the things that you wanna do especially if you're upset when you read the customer's, say for instance, support ticket or email or get a voicemail where they're upset. If you're upset the first thing to do is to take a time out for a few minutes maybe do some push ups or jumping jacks or take a walk or go somewhere where you're out by yourself and scream. Whatever it is, you don't wanna aim that anger at your customer. The reason is, first of all, is normally anger is just gonna produce more anger if you bring that in. But the other thing is its a very good chance that something was misinterpreted. So now that you've got it out of your system. You did some push ups or you took a walk or whatever it is. Now when you get back to your customer you wanna listen to them, hear them out and say “Hey, I understand that there is a challenge with” fill in the blank “your link, your product, your delivery” or whatever it is. Understand that there is a “challenge”. Do not use the word problem. A problem is something that is very negative. A challenge is something that is frustrating me at a time but can be overcome. People like challenges even though they're frustrating at the time up so you're reframing that. So “I understand there was a challenge with blank so I wanna hear what happen from your perspective” and let them talk. It may be a minute, it may be thirty seconds, it may be five minutes but let them talk. When they're done what you gonna do is convey to them that you've been listening by repeating back to them a summary of what they said. This is really important for a few reasons. The way to do it is essentially to say “if I'm hearing you correctly what happen was... You paid on Tuesday, you send in your payment via Paypal and then by Thursday you still haven't receive the link and so you're frustrated so you really wanna get access to whatever product you paid for it and you haven't got it yet. Is that accurate or is that what happen?” Now when you do this, first of all, most people don't listen. So if you not only listen, take the time to listen but then validate them and say “if I'm hearing you correctly, this is what happen...” and they say “yes, that's what happen” then the key thing for validating here is to not try and fix it or defend yourself but to put yourself in their shoes for just a minute and just picture how it would feel to them to be where they're at and validate them. One of the best ways to this is to say “it sounds like that's really frustrating... or I'm sure that's gonna be aggravating...or I can understand why you'd be so upset about that I would be upset too” You wanna relate with them. Even if you know that their perception is wrong, they still have feelings and those feelings are valid. So you as a vendor wanna validate those feelings, inorder to build that relationship and to just be a better person. You'll gonna find that this isn't just for business but this is for your spouse, your children, your parents, your friends. Validating people means “Gosh, that sounds like its really frustrating, I'm sure that's gotta feel so aggravating” whatever it is that they're saying “I'm really frustrated because my link is gone. I feel lost without a cash, I must stink to feel lost. By simply doing this you're gonna see that walls are get lowered and people will appreciate it and if they don't for some strange reason they might just need a little bit more time but you're doing the best thing that you can as a vendor,