Hold Your Ground: A Customer Service Skills Essential

When you work in customer service you’re inevitably going to have to deal with a screaming customer. Whether you’re toiling away in the food industry as a waiter or in the hotel industry as a concierge or even on the telephone giving tech support, people get frustrated sometimes and they are going to take it out on you.

You have to understand that sometimes people are just jerks and they don’t know how to respect their fellow man and other times they are just victims of a no good very bad day and you just happen to fall into the tornado they are creating for themselves. I’ve been yelled at on many occasions. A woman broke down in tears while I was making her sandwich because I put too much mustard on it when I worked at Subway restaurants. A grown man through a temper tantrum at my hotel when I told him he needed to pay twenty four dollars per night for parking his car in our lot. When you are forced to interact with people from all over the world on a regular basis you’re bound to run into a few unstable ones from time to time.

One of the best lessons I’ve learned from working in customer service is that proper customer service skills require us to remain calm under pressure. When you have a customer who has clearly lost his mind and is screaming and yelling at you because he is frustrated with some aspect of your service (whether it is truly your fault or not doesn’t make any difference) the best thing you can do is hold your ground and keep smiling.

Being polite in the face of anger and frustration is the only way you’re going to quell the situation and make it go away as fast as possible. If you begin to match the customer blow for blow with witty remarks and raised voices you’re only going to fuel the fire and keep the fight going for longer and longer. Secretly people like to fight with the customer service I think so it is in your best interest to stop the fight as soon as you can because it will only get worse and eventually you’ll do something you regret. One angry customer isn’t worth losing your job over.

Think like a Zen master when dealing with angry clients. Remove yourself from the situation and just put apologies and explanations on auto pilot. Deliver your responses with a calm and soothing tone and always remember to try and smile as much as you can. Doing this will throw the customer off guard, remember that in regular life situations if someone is yelling at you you’re going to yell back. Fighting back is the expected human response and when you don’t give it to them they are going to be put off by it.

Treat the customer as you would like them to treat you. Use your tone and voice to set the proper example for the customer. There are better ways to express frustration and anger than to scream and yell and stomp around. Try to get them to explain the problem calmly and make them understand that you are just there to help them, you are not the enemy here.

Sometimes in the hotel industry we are trained to give the customer what they want within reason. You have to try and gauge the customer’s anger and respond adequately. If they are screaming bloody murder, roll out the red carpet for them and try to get them to calm down with any resources you have at your disposal. If they are only slightly perturbed, see what you can do for them and get it done quickly.

Hold your ground, remain calm, and try to help them as best you can. Eventually the fight will end and the customer will go away satisfied (hopefully.)

Customer Service Skills Guide
The Customer Service Skills Guide has a lot of helpful information on ways to improve your customer service skills. Better your customer service and better your business.