Angry Customers are Often Right

By Steve Brubaker, InfoCision Chief of Staff  

One of the hardest realities to face in the customer service industry is that even if you do everything right, there will always be unhappy customers that require extra attention. You just can’t please everyone all the time, no matter how hard you try. This is the nature of business.

If you think about it, though, angry customers can be highly valuable to your organization. After all, angry customers typically have a lot to say. And oftentimes, they are right. Businesses that take the time to listen to their customers stand to learn a great deal of information that can be used to create products and services that are more in line with consumers’ needs.

Let’s consider some of the top reasons why customers get mad:

Poor user experiences: When customers are dissatisfied with the products or services they pay for, they often reach for the telephone and attempt to contact the company to voice their complaints. And they do not typically hold back their emotions, or ideas.

What’s the best way to deal with this challenge? First, understand that there may be no way of calming the customer down. The customer may use profanity, or go on a long rant. The agent, in this situation, should remain calm and let the customer finish his or her thoughts. Then, when the opportunity presents itself, the agent should give the customer his or her complete and undivided attention. The agent should then sympathize with the customer, and record the complaint. Then, the agent should let the customer know that the company is committed to resolving the issue. The note should be saved, and taken into consideration by the organization’s research and development team to see if there is a legitimate way of resolving it. And then, the team should reach out to thank the customer for their feedback and ask for their continued support. This will let the customer know their opinion is highly valued.

Dropped calls: One of the biggest reasons why customers get angry while waiting on the phone for an agent is that they get passed along from agent to agent, and eventually dropped —forcing them to dial in again and wait for another representative to answer the phone. When this happens, a process that should take 15 minutes could easily take a half an hour or longer.

The lesson here is that businesses need reliable and efficient phone systems, and they should never be passed along unnecessarily between agents. If this is happening in your organization action needs to be taken to improve the system.

Billing disputes: This is one of the hardest challenges to handle over the phone, mainly because billing is typically an issue that is beyond an agent’s control. In some situations, managers can empower agents to work with customers and award perks or benefits; but billing is much harder to handle and needs to be treated with the utmost sensitivity. Again, though, a customer could be right about a billing dispute and so the receiving agent needs to hear the complaint and look for ways of escalating it for higher-ups to consider.