5 tips for dealing with difficult customers

By David Ronald

With the good comes the bad and, in business, this sometimes means having to deal with difficult customers.

"The customer is always right" is a common adage but, as any experienced vendor knows, perhaps as the consequence of a painful experience, is an adage that’s untrue—your customers can be wrong and, indeed, can be wrong often.

What is true, however, is that the customer is always the customer, even if he is ill-informed, inexperienced or downright deceptive. And his status as customer, and source of your livelihood, dictates that you try your best to interact effectively with him.

But even simple personality differences can cause friction that, over time, risks destroying business relationships. And keeping a positive attitude when you must overcome feelings of frustration, dislike or distrust, can be especially challenging.

In this post I’m going to examine five communication skills that can enhance relationships with even your most difficult customers.

1. Listen

True listening is a disappearing art but, in order to communicate effectively with anyone, it's an imperative. Although the ear is only the organ that delivers sound waves to the brain, a good listener also engages her heart and mind. She does not allow herself to become distracted, but focuses on the speaker. She doesn't formulate answers before the speaker completes a statement. Nor does she give the appearance of being defensive.

2. Accept

Accept what the customer says at face value, even if you think he is wrong. He thinks he is right, and perception is the most important thing. If he perceives that you accept and believe him, he will be more likely to relax and get to the point. A common hallmark of strained interactions is that the main bone of contention is saved for last. The complainant will build up to his real issue by talking about the peripheral ones first. And that also allows him to build a mountain of anger out of his molehill of frustration.

3. Respect

If the customer receives respect from you, he will likely return it. If he feels disrespected, it will be perceived as a personal attack. Remember, you can learn something from anybody, regardless of education level, financial situation, or physical appearance. Everyone deserves respect simply for being human.

4. Empathize

You can offer sympathy to someone who is having a problem, but empathy will go much further toward achieving your goals. Put yourself in the customer's place. Wouldn't you be disgruntled or angry, or even fearful, if a product or service didn't perform according to its advertising or worse, caused some type of damage or injury?

5. Negotiate

If you successfully employ listening, accepting, respecting and empathizing, you will pave the way for negotiating. You will have put the difficult person at ease and he will be better prepared to drop his aggression and enter into negotiations, more confident of being treated with fairness, honesty and integrity.

Always try to resolve a customer's issue with one conversation—the quicker the issue is resolved the better the customer will feel about the interaction.

The reality is that problems will occur. Allow yourself to learn from difficult customers in a way that helps strengthen your business and increases the probability of your overall success.

You just may begin to be grateful for the difficult customers out there every now and again.

Thank for reading. Leave us a comment if you found this blog post useful.