Succeeding with Difficult Customers

By Joseph Koob II

"Succeeding with Difficult Customers" is for anyone who is in contact with customers on a regular basis: clerks, sales personnel, customer service representatives, phone service representatives, managers who are in the customer contact loop, and so on. It is also for those business owners and company executives who want to gain insight into what is really important for them and their representatives to know about working with difficult customers. Therefore some sections of this book will focus more toward those who work directly with customers, while other sections speak more toward managerial responsibilities. There IS considerable overlap because all of this information is valuable to anyone involved in dealing with customers. Most importantly this entire book is about customer service, and the many key ideas that make or break what happens out in the real world where personnel interact with customers every day.

While many businesses do provide training in how their personnel approach customers in a positive and gracious manner, there are other important knowledge and skill development areas that are often left to chance. Unfortunately the focus is often fairly one way – how customer service personnel interact with customers, i.e. their overall demeanor. This book takes the learning into several other important dimensions of customer service as well: Knowing and Understanding the Customer; Communications; Dealing with Difficult Customers; and the training and support these customer contact personnel should be receiving.

We will present information that will give you extensive insight and knowledge into the customer’s perspective, i.e., what you need to know as a company representative to do your job successfully, the internal and external support you need, and the tools and skills to communicate effectively with difficult customers.

I have held a wide variety of jobs in my life, from sales to service to managerial. There is one overriding truth that comes from all of this: people are people and want to be treated fairly and considerately. When I am engaged with a company’s representative I often think in terms of, “What is happening here that is good?” and “What is not happening here that should be happening?” It is important to keep in mind that knowing what the customer thinks, and how he or she feels, is essential to your being at the top of your game as a person who works with customers on a regular basis. It makes all the difference as to whether that person will consider doing business with your company/establishment in the future and how he/she will communicate their feelings and experience to others.

What I hope you will gain from this book is an understanding of the wide scope of effective knowledge, tools, and skills that are available to you for dealing with people, even difficult people, on a daily basis. Your company will hopefully provide more specific information on what is critical to their approach to customer relations, their general operations, and their customer base.

It is our wish that your well-being and enjoyment of work and life may be more fulfilling as a result of this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Koob II
• Release date: Sep 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301087471

Joseph Koob II

Dr. Koob is one of the foremost authorities on "Understanding and Working with Difficult People" with a dozen books, including "Succeeding with Difficult Coworkers," Managing Difficult Employees," and "Succeeding with Difficult Bosses".He is founder and owner of Metacoach LLC and Difficultpeople.org which has the world’s most extensive materials available on Working with Difficult People and through Difficult Situations. His range of experience includes 20+ years as a college educator/manager/director, executive and personal coach, and as a motivational speaker. He does business trainings and seminars throughout the United States and Canada, and has appeared on radio and TV. Dr. Koob works with clients around the world as a business and personal coach, software designer, and educator. Dr. Koob is a dynamic speaker whose down-to-earth style, imbued with humor and practicality, is popular with audiences throughout the United States. Practical and inspirational topics include Management and Leadership; Communicating with Difficult People; Time Management; Stress Management; “How to Have More Fun at Work,” “Proud to be an American,” and others. B. Mus, DePauw Univ. M. A. Montclair State Univ. M. S. in Counseling, Northern State Univ. Doctorate in Education; Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Book preview

Succeeding with Difficult Customers

Dr. Joseph Koob

Copyright 2012, Joseph Koob

Smashwords Edition

Cover Illustration by Robert Haselier

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For more information and for inquiries visit http://www.difficultpeople.org

A difficultpeople.org publication

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: Introduction, Key Ideas

Part I Understanding the Customer

Chapter 2: Customer’s Needs, Wants, and Intent

Chapter 3: Customer Intent

Chapter 4: Customer Pet Peeves

Chapter 5: Customer Pet Peeves II

Chapter 6: Customer Pet Peeves III

Chapter 7: Difficult Customers

Part II Company Responsibilities

Chapter 8: Rules and Procedures – Setting guidelines

Chapter 9: Decisions: Setting Limits

Chapter 10: Training Customer Contact Personnel

Chapter 11: Training Customer Service Personnel

Chapter 12: Personnel Support

Addendum: Creating Integrity

Part III Dealing with Difficult Customers

Chapter 13: Goals

Chapter 14: What You Bring to the Table

Chapter 15:Self-Awareness

Chapter 16: Self-Worth

Chapter 17: Self-Confidence

Chapter 18: Self-Control

Chapter 19: Honesty

Chapter 20: Kindness

Chapter 21: Positivity

Chapter 22: Communicating with Customers

Chapter 23: Communicating with Difficult Customers

Chapter 24: Dealing with REALLY Difficult Customers

Chapter 25: Taking Care of Yourself

Chapter 26: Wrapping Up

Review Sections

Section I: Understanding the Customer

Section II: Company Responsibilities

Section III: Dealing with Difficult Customers

Appendix I: Being in Control

Appendix II: Choices

Appendix III: About difficultpeople.org

Annotated Bibliography of Books by Dr. Koob

Bibliography

Thanks

My thanks to all the usual suspects: Lisa, (my wife), Nathan, and Anne, my stalwart readers and all those many people who have helped difficultpeople.org along the way. A special thanks to Marty Dobkins (http://www.MarJimBooks.com) for getting this formatting done for this e-book presentation.

Preface

This book is for anyone who is in contact with customers on a regular basis: clerks, sales personnel, customer service representatives, phone service representatives, managers who are in the customer contact loop, and so on. It is also for those business owners and company executives who want to gain insight into what is really important for them and their representatives to know about working with difficult customers. Therefore some sections of this book will focus more toward those who work directly with customers, while other sections speak more toward managerial responsibilities. Sometimes I seem to be focusing on business owners or managers, at other times, customer contact personnel. There IS considerable overlap because I feel all of this information is valuable to anyone involved in business with customers. Whatever your role, I recommend you read the whole book, because I believe you will be able to glean important information from every chapter. If at some point I seem to be talking to a role different from the one you play, keep reading. I am just trying to focus a point in one direction or another.

Most importantly this entire book is about customer service, and the many key ideas that make or break what happens out in the real world where personnel interact with customers every day.

While many businesses do provide training in how their personnel approach customers in a positive and gracious manner, there are other important knowledge and skill development areas that are often left to chance. Unfortunately the focus is often fairly one way – how customer service personnel interact with customers, i.e. their overall demeanor. This book takes the learning into several other important dimensions of customer service as well: Knowing and Understanding the Customer; Communications; Dealing with Difficult Customers; and the training and support these customer contact personnel should be receiving.

We will present information that will give you extensive insight and knowledge into the customer’s perspective, i.e., what you need to know as a company representative to do your job successfully, the internal and external support you need, and the tools and skills to communicate effectively with difficult customers.

I have held a wide variety of jobs in my life, from sales to service to managerial. There is one overriding truth that comes from all of this: people are people and want to be treated fairly and considerately. When I am engaged with a company’s representative I often think in terms of, What is happening here that is good? and What is not happening here that should be happening? It is important to keep in mind that knowing what the customer thinks, and how he or she feels, is essential to your being at the top of your game as a person who works with customers on a regular basis. It makes all the difference as to whether that person will consider doing business with your company/establishment in the future and how he/she will communicate their feelings and experience to others.

What I hope you will gain from this book is an understanding of the wide scope of effective knowledge, tools, and skills that are available to you for dealing with people, even difficult people, on a daily basis. Your company will hopefully provide more specific information on what is critical to their approach to customer relations, their general operations, and their customer base.

It is our wish that your well-being and enjoyment of work and life may be more fulfilling as a result of this book.

Format

The design of this book is meant to serve primarily in an educational role and hence the format has been aimed for the following:

Highlighting of key points

Succinct, practical format

Down-to-earth, easy-to-read style

Repetition of key ideas

Chapter reading length from five to ten minutes

We use the term customer contact personnel for all personnel in a company that regularly work with customers directly. Customer service personnel are more specifically those people who are designated by a company to deal with customer concerns, i.e. service desk personnel, managers who work with customers regularly, and customer service representatives (phone and counter). In this book, however, I generally use the two terms fairly interchangeably. You know your job and responsibilities better than anyone. Apply the ideas in this book to your situation and work, and you WILL be of service to everyone you connect with on a daily basis.

On repetition:

I spent much of my life as an educator – repetition works! To that end you will find key ideas cropping up again and again in different ways, with different examples.

I have included an introductory chapter that highlights Key Ideas,

AND

I am including an extensive three-section summary at the end of this book as a ‘quick-reference’ to important points stressed in the major sections of the text. This will hopefully provide those interested with a base for reinforcing what they have learned by reading this book.

On the Order of Things

I am not particular about how one reads my books. The three main sections here-in – Understanding the Customer, Company Responsibilities, and Dealing with Customers – can easily be read in any order. I do encourage you to read the whole book, as every section has relevance whether you are a customer contact person, a manager, or an owner.

The current outline builds from one section to another with some very key ideas revisited throughout. In order to be fully prepared to work with customers, particularly DIFFICULT customers, it is very helpful to know as much as you can about:

The customers themselves – what they are bringing to the table

Your business – what can they do to help you be prepared for anything!

Yourself – learning what tools and skills you can use to be successful with customers

Getting the most from this book

A great approach to this book is to use whatever technique(s) you prefer to remind yourself of key ideas:

High-light the text

Jot notes in the margin

Take notes on a separate pad

Add your own thoughts and ideas as you read – everyone has great ideas!

Type up your notes and keep them close as you work as a reminder of key concepts

Questions, Ideas, Feedback

We are constantly learning at difficultpeople.org. You can offer feedback, ask questions, and send us your ideas, we are always willing to listen to our readers. We encourage you to contact us at any time at any of our up-to-date e-mail links on our website: http://www.difficultpeople.org and on our blog: http://www.difficultppl.wordpress.com/. We will consider all ideas that we receive, and respond as quickly as we can to inquiries and feedback.

Chapter 1 Introduction

Key Ideas

Anyone who deals with customers on a regular basis knows the difficulties and frustrations that frequently arise. Keeping a ‘stiff upper lip,’ maintaining a pleasant, open demeanor, and weathering the more difficult of these encounters can be very stressful. Over time these difficult interactions can be detrimental to customer representatives’ emotional and physical well-being. Putting the gamut of customer relations and interactions into a perspective that is workable, livable, and supportive of the customer contact agent is critical to business success.

Clerks, sales personnel, waitresses/waiters, phone service representatives, counter personnel, managers working in the customer contact loop, small business owners, etc. – all need to understand how to deal with customers successfully. While many businesses do provide customer relations training by demonstrating how to approach customers in a positive and gracious manner, other important knowledge and skill development areas are often left to chance. Large and small companies alike should focus on comprehensive training and support for these key employees

Dealing with Difficult Customers

Training and supporting customer service personnel is smart business. More than any other employees, these front-line agents perform the services that ‘sell’ your company to the rest of the world. If you own a business, ask yourself, What are these key personnel selling? and How are they selling it? If you don’t know the answer to these questions, find out. If you don’t like the answer, make some adjustments.

Key Ideas

In this chapter we will introduce the key concepts that you will find throughout this book. Come back to this section often to remind yourself of what is most important, or as a brief general review.

There are three key areas that a company should consider in training personnel to work with customers:

The Responsibilities a business has in providing representatives with information, training, and support so they can do their jobs successfully and efficiently

Knowing the Customer – Finding out what he/she wants, needs, what they care about, and what their intent is in any interaction is critical to your representatives’ success and to your business’ success.

What are the Knowledge and Skills contact personnel need to be able to Communicate positively and effectively when dealing with customers, especially difficult customers.

It is not just about being nice

Training and supporting customer service personnel is smart business. More than any other employees they perform the service that ‘sells’ your company to the rest of the world. Most companies spend money, time, and effort in training their customer contact personnel in being courteous and congenial to their customers. This, however, is often not nearly enough to ensure that your customer is getting what they want. By helping your personnel understand the customer, by giving them effective communications skills, and by providing them with adequate understanding of the parameters of their service, you help make your business the customer’s best and first choice.

Beyond Nice to Kind

Kindness implies we take a step beyond simply being congenial, to making an effort to understand what is troubling a customer. Difficult behavior can be predicated by many issues, some practical -- here are some common examples:

The customer:

Feels cheated

Feels uncared for

Feels they are not being understood

Had a poor experience

Feels they were treated badly

Didn’t get what they wanted, ordered, thought they were supposed to get

And so on

And some much more subtle reasons that may not be obvious:

Some one just treated them badly, yelled at them: wife, boss, stranger

They are in pain

They just received some very bad news

They are having a bad day, week, year, life

And so on

When we make an effort to understand that they are ‘in pain,’ in other words ‘stressed,’ in a very real sense, whether it is something we understand or agree with or not, we are adding kindness to the mix. Kindness changes the dynamics of almost any difficult situation. When we add compassion to kindness, we take even another step up on the ladder of what humanity is all about.

Compassion is kindness in the most difficult of circumstances

(Koob)

Beyond Kindness to helping people feel ‘Cared For’

This is one of those ideas that flowed from my pen (computer) every time I sat down to write about Dealing with Difficult Customers. When I think of the myriad of good and bad customer service experiences I have had in my life, I always come back to How did this make me feel. When I felt ‘cared for,’ it didn’t matter so much whether I got what I wanted or what I thought I needed. I still came away feeling like somehow this was a good experience, and that I had gained from it.

Keep this fundamental idea with you throughout your work life (and your life!): people want to feel cared for.

What is also great about this is -- we feel good for having made the effort.

"The Customer is Always Right"

This oft quoted mantra of the business world is still a very important consideration today. However, by turning this slightly around, it might be better to seriously consider the question,

Is the customer always right?

Part of the purpose of this book will be to answer this question.

An insight into the answer is: Yes, if you view it from a We want our customers to be happy, standpoint. There are, however, almost always qualifications to any situation. As a person who regularly works with customers, you need to know what those qualifications are or might be. You need to understand the situation AND the customer to the best of your ability.

You need to understand what you can and can’t do to help the customer:

Be right

Feel that they are right

Get a satisfactory resolution to their concern

Understand what can and can’t be done for them and why

Feel they are being/have been treated fairly

Feel that they have been heard AND understood

Feel that they have been cared for

Difficult Customers?

Who qualifies as a difficult customer?

At difficultpeople.org we have defined a difficult person as,

"Anyone who causes