It may be a sign of the times, but frequently customer facing personnel are required to deal with difficult and aggressive customers. Customers have a right to complain about poor service, a poor product or simply their expectations were not met, but sometimes their frustrations can spill over into intimidating and aggressive behaviour that can be very difficult to deal with.

Our bespoke training courses will teach you how to proactively deal with difficult or aggressive customers and transform customer complaints into business opportunities.

Whilst there is not a perfect solution to dealing with aggressive or angry customers, these are some hints and tips that will help you:

  1. Be clear about what you want the outcome to be. (e.g. satisfied customer, not frustrated etc.)
  2. Never, ever promise what you can’t deliver.
  3. Don’t tell them that you understand how they feel because the likelihood is you won’t.
  4. Validate the customer’s feelings.
  5. DO take responsibility for what you can.
  6. Get as much specific information about the customer’s perception of the problem as possible.
  7. Stay calm and focussed on the desire to resolve the customer’s problem.
  8. After you have finished dealing with the incident, take a few minutes to relax, take a break or walk so that it doesn’t adversely affect you.

Dealing with aggressive and angry customers effectively is tough but a vital skill for all customer service personnel and the tips outlined above will help you to deal more effectively with them.  However our Dealing with Difficult Customers and Situations in house Training Course equips delegates with the skills to:

  • Manage customer expectations and problems constructively
  • Have difficult conversations with customers and deal with tricky or aggressive customers and situations successfully.
  • Be able to predict the escalation of a potentially aggressive incident
  • Increase their personal resilience and be able to deal with the impact of a difficult incident.