One of the most annoying parts of being a frontline staff member and also one of the most necessary parts is dealing with irate customers. Sometimes customers just aren’t easy to handle. There are requests that they make that are sometimes too crazy to believe and they can get pretty frustrated with services quickly. That’s why it’s crucial that each and every one of your frontline staff members is prepared to deal with every eventuality when it comes to the customer’s experience.
There are plenty of things that you can teach your employees so that they are ready to work with each and every customer that comes their way. The last thing that you would want is for your customers and frontline staff members to get into fights with angry customers, that end up in the customer becoming a negative force against your company.
Make Sure That They Know to Respond in A Calm and Collected Manner
The absolute first rule of thumb when dealing with angry or frustrated customers is that your frontline staff members react in a calm and collected manner. No matter how taken aback they are by the customer’s actions, it’s crucial that calm is the name of the game. That’s because a customer is looking for a reaction from your frontline staff member when they start yelling or speaking angrily about your product or service. People generally just want to start yelling for the fact that they could get the same response from the other person.
However, your frontline staff members should never get in such a confrontation with a customer. If that happens, this could end up in a much more violent situation that will leave the customer seriously unhappy and endanger the safety of your store. When training your frontline staff members, try to do some practice interactions so that they can see what it means to respond in a calm manner to someone who is not so calm. This is going to improve everyone’s experience.
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It is crucial to have a trained employee force, whether it is the front-line staff or workers, all must be acquainted with the safety norms. An authentic video-based safety program will be a great alternative for long hours of seminars.
Empathy and Positive Body Language Are Key Points
One of the next lessons that your frontline members should understand is, to empathize with customers. Empathy is the way that your employees can put themselves in the shoes of the customers to understand where they are coming from. Untrained front-line staffers might think that the customer has no reason to be angry and they are just making a scene. However, there is always a way to see things from their perspective and try to come up with a common solution together. This is super important because this is often the only way to get a customer to calm down and understand that things will be fixed soon.
Another important part of this is the body language that your front liners use when speaking with irate customers. Many times, they might be tempted to cross their arms and give customers a not-so-happy face when they start getting yelled out. However, this negative body language is just going to make customers even angrier and think that they are not taking them seriously. Make sure that you train your employees on the proper positive body language to use with angry customers to make them happier and satisfied.
Being Careful with Words and Phrases That Are Used
An angry customer is going to define everything they hear by what they are feeling inside. That’s why that something that your frontline staff member says that might be meant in a nice manner can be taken wrong by the angry customer. Make sure that your employees know how to properly speak with customers so that their words cannot be construed as not caring for the customer.
For example, instead of saying “Why do you think that?”, your employee can say “I’m so sorry that you feel this way. What might make you think that?”. The second question is much more caring to the customer and sounds more positive, even though both questions are asking the same thing. Try to do some practice rounds with your employees during training. One person can be the angry customer and another one can be the employee who is trying to calm them down. By doing this, your employees are going to be ready in the future when they will be dealing with irate customers.
They Need to Be Honest and Take the Proper Action
One of the worst things that your employees can do when they are dealing with customers on the front-line is to make excuses and not provide immediate action. No matter what, your front-line employees have got to be honest with the customer, not make excuses, and to never make promises that they can’t keep. For example, if your customer demands that he or she gets a discount because of something negative about the product they purchased, that employee should simply say that they don’t know that it’s possible, but they will speak with their manager right away to find out.
Now, something like this isn’t going to make the customer happy right away, but it’s better than promising that a discount could be provided and finding out later that that’s not possible. That’s just going to make the customer even angrier!
Finding an Agreeable Solution and Following Up Later
Lastly, going along with that last point, it’s important that your front-line employees understand how basic human psychology works. No matter what, they should understand that customers just want some kind of solution right away. No matter if that’s actually the solution they are looking for or not, something is way better than nothing in these cases. Customers often just feel very frustrated and helpless whenever they react angrily to front-line staff members. Giving them some kind of assurance will help assuage them for the moment until a full solution can be found.
And there you have it! When it comes to your front-line staff members, these are some of the most important members of your company team. No matter what, make sure that these people are properly trained on how to deal with angry and frustrated customers and handle criticism sportingly. This will ensure that solutions can be found and your customers don’t find themselves being frustrated for too long.
