If you work for any type of business, one of your main goals should be to make sure that you’re keeping your customers or clients happy. But despite your best efforts, things can and will happen that will cause your customers or clients to occasionally become unhappy. And while you can do things preemptively to avoid this when you notice issues taking place, like taking care of load shift while in transit or streamlining shipping processes, there are still so many things that you don’t have control over, like data breaches.
With all of this in mind, it’s wise to have your staff trained in the best ways to deal with people when they’re having a hard time with your business or feel themselves disappointed by your service. So to help ensure that your relationships with your customers or clients can make it through these tough interactions, here are three tips for dealing with unhappy customers or clients.
Don’t Allow Yourself To Get Flustered
For many people, when someone comes at them hot, they have an automatic response to meet them at their level. But when you’re trying to figure things out with a customer or client, your ability to maintain your cool can make a world of difference.
To help you not get flustered when someone is upset about something that’s happened when working with your company, try not to take whatever they’re saying personally. More than likely, whatever happened wasn’t actually your fault. So although you might be taking the brunt of their emotions, you likely didn’t cause them. Knowing this, hopefully you’ll be able to stay calm, keep your wits about you, and respond to them in a less elevated manner than they’re speaking to you.
Make Sure They Feel Heard
As your customer or client is speaking with you about the issue they’re experiencing, one of the best things you can do is make them feel heard and understood.
To do this, you’ll want to make sure that you’re maintaining eye contact with them as they’re speaking. This will help them to know that you’re listening and taking in what they’re saying. Along with this, when they stop talking and it’s your turn to respond, make sure you restate the issue as they’ve explained it to you so that both you and your customer are on the same page.
Ask How They’d Like You To Resolve The Issue
Once you feel like you have a firm grasp on the issues they’re having, to best fix everything, you may want to ask them what they’d like to have happen next. In most cases, your customer will already have a solution in their mind that will help them feel better about what’s happened. And if you’re able to come through on their proposed solution, this can go a long way toward repairing this relationship and maintaining this customer or client.
If you want your company to be better at dealing with customers or clients who are unhappy with your product or service, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you learn how this can best be accomplished.