Handling Complaints and Difficult Customers

About the Workshop:

At first glance, handling a difficult customer may seem like a thankless job.

Fortunately, you can develop skills to adapt to the challenges difficult customers pose and extend these skills to handling difficult people and situations throughout your daily life.

By improving the focus of your thoughts and feelings, how you manage stress, and how well you listen to and empathize with others, you will be better able to meet the challenges other people pose in both your professional and personal life.

Implementing the guidelines in this module is the first step in a process towards forever changing how you interact with others.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this workshop, participants should be able to:

• Cultivate a positive attitude

• Manage internal and external stress

• Develop abilities to listen actively and empathize

• Build a rapport with customers in person and over the phone

• Understand the diverse challenges posed by customers

• Develop strategies to adapt to challenging circumstances

• Handle complaints effectively

• Handle difficult customers

Topics Covered:

1. The Right Attitude Starts with You

• Make Gratitude a Habit

• Keep Your Body Healthy

• Invoke Inner Peace

2. Stress Management (Internal Stressors)

• Irritability

• Unhappiness With Your Job

• Feeling Underappreciated

• Not Well Rested

• Stress Management (External Stressors)

• Manage Your Work Space

• Loud Work Environment

• Co-Worker Relations

• Demanding Supervisor

3. Transactional Analysis

• What is Transactional Analysis

• Parent

• Child

• Adult

• Why are Some Customers Difficult

• They Have Truly Had a Bad Experience and Want to Vent

• Want Someone to be Held Accountable

• They Have Truly Had a Bad Experience and Want Resolution

• They are Generally Unhappy

4. Dealing with the Customer Over the Phone

• Listen to the Customer’s Complaint

• Build Rapport

• Do Not Respond with Negative Words or Emotion

• Offer a Verbal Solution to Your Customer

5. Dealing with the Customer In Person

• Listen to the Customer’s Concerns

• Build Rapport

• Respond with Positive Words and Body Language

• Aside from Words

6. Sensitivity in Dealing with Customers

• Customers who are Angry

• Customers who are Rude

• Customers with Different Cultural Values

• Customers who Cannot be Satisfied

7. Scenarios of Dealing with a Difficult Customer

• Angry Customer

• Rude Customer

• A Customer from Another Culture

• An Impossible to Please Customer

8. Following up With a Customer Once You Have Addressed Their Issue

• Call the Customer

• Send the Customer an Email

• Mail the Customer a Small Token

• Snail-Mail a Handwritten or Typed Letter

9. Lessons Learned

• Post Assessment

• Action Plan

Duration: 9 Hours