6 tips for dealing with unhappy customers

1. Keep calm

A well-known fact is that emotions can be contagious, and emotions can cause us to do the most irrational things. When you talk with an unhappy customer, don’t take the criticism as a personal attack and don’t let the customer’s disappointment have a negative impact on you. In other words, don’t become defensive, that will only make the situation worse and make it very difficult for you to help the customer in the best way possible.

Try your best to remain calm instead. It’s useful to have a pre-planned approach for when you get a call from an unhappy customer, with guidelines for how to handle the call already in the plan. It’ll help you manage the situation and the complaint in a methodical way without giving in to your emotions.

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2. Listen to the customer

Most customers don’t become unhappy and frustrated all of a sudden. Instead, it’s usually a compound of small issues that finally brings the customer to burst out which creates the situation. At this stage the customer wants to get it all out of their system and whoever is on the other end of the line will need to be patient and listen.

Even if your first instinct might be to start defending yourself and your company you need to allow the customer to finish what they need to say before you respond. Show them that you are listening without interrupting them when they’re explaining the issue and wait until they stop. Once they’ve managed to express all their emotions and frustrations, it’ll finally be possible for you to handle the information they told you and use it in a constructive way to start turning the call around into a positive experience instead.

3. Give the customer validation and attention

Once you have allowed the customer to express all their feelings, you need to demonstrate that an unhappy customer is something you take seriously and listen to. Validate the customer’s view and show attention to the issues they brought up.

For example, if a customer’s view is that a product or service is inferior, poor or useless, there’s no point in blaming someone else or saying something along the lines of “I do not think so, because we have many happy customers…” – no matter how tempting it might be to do so. That’s not what the customer wants to hear. Instead, say that you are sorry to hear that he or she feels that way and ask what it is that makes the product or service poor in the customer’s view – unless the customer has already explained why, obviously. In other words, it’s important that you show them you want to solve their issue.

4. Ask what you can do for them

The next step is to solve the issue. Contrary to what you might think, you don’t need to present a solution straight away. You’re better off asking the customer how they would like to see the situation resolved. Why? Because it gives the customer a sense of control, and you gain insight into what is required to compensate the customer for what has occurred.

If the customer suggests something unrealistic, simply tell them that unfortunately, you can’t do that and instead provide them with some other suggestions that they can choose from.

5. Get to the bottom of the issue and inform the right people internally

As previously mentioned, a customer’s dissatisfaction may be due to a variety of reasons. Sometimes customers aren’t aware of the real reason why they’re unhappy. It’s easy to assume that it has something to do with price or quality of the product or service, but that’s rarely the real issue. One of the most common reasons a customer abandons a supplier is that they feel ignored by the supplier.

Make sure to get to the bottom of the issue and check the history of the customer in the CRM system: has customer complained previously about the issue and if they did, how did you handle the situation then? Review your internal routines and notify your colleagues that they need to do things differently in the future to avoid the same situation from being repeated again.

6. Follow up and be extra attentive

Once you have done everything in your power to solve the issue, make sure to keep monitoring the relationship and follow up with the customer that they’re satisfied with the solution. This shows that you really care about the customer and that you want them to be satisfied. It also allows you to deal with any “remaining” frustrations and avoid the situation from flaring up again, helping you to build up a better relationship with the customer and stopping them from churning.