Manila Bulletin

How to deal with difficult customers

- Illustrati­on by Rod Cañalita

asking for, then politely explain this to them.

Never lose your cool. You cannot fight fire with fire. Remain calm even if your customer is starting to test your patience. Be objective, admit mistakes, and answer politely. In addition, if the mistake was on the company’s part, maybe you can offer small tokens of apology like serving them hot coffee or leading them personally to their seat. However, never give things your company cannot really give away.

Put the situation into writing. Write down all the important details that will help you come up with ideas and protocols on how to prevent the same situation from happening again. If the problem was miscommuni­cation between the customer and the company’s customer representa­tive, then it would be best to forward the concern to the appropriat­e person. If it was you who made the mistake, write it down. Create a detailed report for you to study afterwards. Indicate the incident, the time the problem occurred, what the client said, how you responded, and the department that was involved in the issue. You need to get the whole picture so that you can make a sound decision.

Improve your procedures. You have understood the common problems your customers face. You have understood the company policies. Compare them and see if there is something lacking in the policy, or something that you need to modify to address these problems.

Don’t stress yourself too much and hate your job because of a few unruly customers. Look at difficult customers as a chance to showcase how well your company can handle such matters. See them as learning opportunit­ies that will help you grow profession­ally, and know that the only way for you not to get into the same kind of situation is to learn from it and prevent it from happening again.

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