{"id":219,"date":"2015-04-26T19:53:50","date_gmt":"2015-04-26T19:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/csm210469\/?p=219"},"modified":"2022-10-21T15:44:37","modified_gmt":"2022-10-21T15:44:37","slug":"handling-challenging-situations-with-a-customer-focused-mindset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/handling-challenging-situations-with-a-customer-focused-mindset\/","title":{"rendered":"Handling Challenging Situations with a Customer-Focused Mindset"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Customer service often means dealing with angry, frustrated, or rude customers.<\/strong><\/p>\n<img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-8419\" src=\"http:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/anger.jpg\" alt=\"Angry customer shouting\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/anger.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/anger-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/>\n<p>Dealing with those customers effectively can often make or break a company. This article presents a five-step process for dealing with difficult customers.<\/p>\n<p>Most Customer Service Professionals deal with many challenging customer situations. These situations may include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A customer who is upset about the quality or delivery of our product\/service.<\/li>\n<li>A product return or a cancellation of services.<\/li>\n<li>Incorrect information given to the customer.<\/li>\n<li>A customer who is negative toward your company due to past experiences.<\/li>\n<li>Confrontational issues and conflict.<\/li>\n<li>Angry customers.<\/li>\n<li>Explaining a company policy or procedure.<\/li>\n<li>Fielding a request to escalate a call to management.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The ultimate goal in these challenging situations is to provide a win-win solution. We want our customer to leave the interaction feeling listened to, well taken care of, and valued. A customer-focused mindset will have a tremendous impact on accomplishing these goals. Along with customer focus, an invaluable tool for dealing with challenging situations is the Five-Step Process.<\/p>\n<h2>The Five-Step Process<\/h2>\n<p>Have you ever been an upset customer, calling your product or service provider with a serious problem? If you receive a satisfactory resolution and\u00a0you feel listened to, well taken care of, and valued during your interaction, aren&#8217;t you likely to consider doing business with this company again? The Five-Step Process will help us to provide our customers with this positive experience. Aside from reaching a win-win solution, the goal of the Five-Step Process is to leave our customers feeling listened to, well taken care of, and valued. Let\u2019s examine the specific steps of the Five-Step Process.<\/p>\n<h3>Step 1 \u2013 Strategize<\/h3>\n<p>How do you develop a strategy?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Develop your goal for the interaction. What do you want as the end result? (i.e., save the customer, resolve an issue, etc\u2026)<\/li>\n<li>Identify your parameters: what can you do or provide the customer independently or with your supervisor\u2019s approval? What can&#8217;t\u00a0you do because of policy or business reasons?<\/li>\n<li>Prepare by identifying common problems and win-win solutions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Your strategy should be to arrive at a solution that will be a win for both your company and the customer. If you are successful, you will retain the customer, exceed the customer\u2019s expectations, and provide a very positive customer experience so that he\/she will want to continue doing business\u00a0with your company.<\/p>\n<h3>Step 2 \u2013 Acknowledge<\/h3>\n<p>The acknowledgement is essential to communicating in challenging situations. Use phrases like, \u201cI understand how you feel\u201d, \u201cI see\u201d, \u201cI apologize\u201d, \u201cI\u00a0am sorry\u201d, \u201cI can see how you might feel that way\u201d so that customers feel that they have been heard and that we respect them. It clears the way for us\u00a0to move forward by helping diffuse the emotion and placing us on the side of the customer.<\/p>\n<h3>Step 3 \u2013 Clarify<\/h3>\n<p>Sometimes we mistakenly proceed to resolve a problem based on what we think\u00a0the customer was saying. This third step of the process allows us\u00a0to clarify and draw out information to make sure that we understand the customer\u2019s true concern. Examples of clarifying might include: \u00b7 \u201cWhat I hear\u00a0you saying is\u2026\u2026is that right?\u201d<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cCan you tell me more about\u2026..?\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cHow may I help you\u2026.?\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWhat were you hoping would happen\u2026?\u201d Clarifying leads us to the appropriate solution in a more efficient manner.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Step 4 \u2013 Present Resolution<\/h3>\n<p>The fourth step is to present a resolution. Presenting a resolution is not a challenge if we&#8217;ve done the first three steps properly. As we present the\u00a0resolution, we want to state specifically what we are going to do for the customer. We may also offer alternatives. Note: As we discussed in Step 1:\u00a0Strategize, it is critical to understand your parameters \u2013 what you can do for the customer and what you can&#8217;t\u00a0do.<\/p>\n<h3>Step 5 \u2013 Checkback<\/h3>\n<p>The checkback is our opportunity to make sure that the customer is satisfied and feels good about the resolution.<\/p>\n<p>Examples of checkbacks include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cHow does that sound?\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWhat do you think about x?\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cAre you with me?\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cDoes that make sense?\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWill that meet your needs?\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWould that be satisfactory?\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Applying the Five-Step Process<\/h3>\n<p>The following example illustrates a customer-focused approach, using the Five-Step Process. Step 1: Strategize: Our strategy is to retain the customer\u00a0whenever possible. We want to provide the customer with a positive experience while balancing both the business and customer needs. We don\u2019t want\u00a0to simply accept return merchandise since we know we will lose the customer.<\/p>\n<p>A customer calls to complain about the quality of the product he received.<\/p>\n<p>Acknowledge: \u201cI apologize that the product was not of the quality that you expected. I understand your frustration. I can help.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Clarify: \u201cIn order for us to improve on the quality \u2013 and for me to better serve you, may I ask what specific areas were of poor quality?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Present Resolution: \u201cWe would be happy to exchange the product for a similar product of higher quality.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Checkback: \u201cWould that be satisfactory?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Depending on the customer\u2019s responses, we may actually have to go through the Five-Step Process many times during one customer interaction.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0Five-Step Process will help you to avoid becoming argumentative by lessening the conflict and opening dialogue with the customer. It will assist you in\u00a0providing a more positive customer experience.<\/p>\n<p><strong>About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Terence R. Traut is the president of Entelechy, Inc., a company that helps organizations <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unlockit.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">unlock the potential<\/a> of their people through customized training programs in the areas of sales, management, customer service, and training. This article\u00a0comes from &#8220;Handling Challenging Situations&#8221;, a module in Entelechy\u2019s High Performance Customer Service program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Customer service often means dealing with angry, frustrated, or rude customers. Let\u2019s examine the specific steps of the Five-Step Process for handling these customers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[16],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36026,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions\/36026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}