How to Deal with a Difficult Customer

When you’re running a business, customers are your lifeblood. Whatever a customer means to you, whether that’s a single person buying one product from you, or a client who retains your services for their whole company, their good will is what ensures they not only come back to you, but recommend you to other people.

It’s important to keep your customers happy, and that’s why it can be so excruciating when they aren’t, whether that’s your fault, theirs, or totally out of anyone’s control. If you’re running a small business without a dedicated customer service team, it can be both difficult and emotionally exhausting to resolve a situation with an upset or dissatisfied customer.

This short guide should give you a few tips to help with the trickiest situations.

Engage

The most important thing is to fully engage with the dissatisfied customer or client. Make eye contact, and stop doing other tasks. If you’re not dealing with them in person, make sure you’re fully listening to the phone call: don’t type in the background except to record information they give you.

Whatever the reason, a customer has been let down by the service you provide. You are no longer reliable in their eyes. Giving them your time and full attention is the first and most important step in turning the situation around and helping them become a happy customer who may yet recommend you to their friends.

Some upset customers simply want an opportunity to express their dissatisfaction: doing this to a person who is clearly fully engaged and empathetic with them will help them to calm down a lot, and you may find the inciting issue is much smaller and easily solved.

Don’t Blame the Company

It can be tempting, if you’re being empathetic with the customer, to agree with them in blaming the company for the problems they’ve suffered. This should be avoided, before you’ve spoken to your business lawyer about your liabilities in the situation. You don’t want to open yourself or your company to lawsuits.

You can genuinely empathise and apologise to a customer for a bad situation, for the inconvenience they’ve suffered, but do stop short of saying “I’m sorry we caused this”, unless you are completely certain your company is to blame.

Having listened and empathised with a customer, you can then present your best solution to a calmer customer who is ready to hear you.