How To Turn An Angry Customer To An Advocate
It doesn’t matter how great your service or products are, and in reality, not all Customers will love you or be satisfied. In fact, many of them may not even like you. On some days you might be referred to in derogatory terms such as – useless, incompetent, fraud, or other unsavory terms. It comes with the job in Customer service (Don’t take it personally).
Angry Customers are actually a good thing
No matter how tough or rude the Customers get – Don’t pray for passive Customers. The most dangerous thing for any business is having customers who do not care. They look at your product and move along. They never engage, they never care, you’ll never get feedback from them & they’ll never tell others about you.
Angry Customers are a good thing because at least that means they care. An angry Customer is someone who cared and was disappointed. Perhaps the customer thinks your product is too complicated to use, too expensive, or not effective enough, or that your services are slow. Whatever the reason, they want your product to be better than it currently is.
So, how do you turn an angry customer into an advocate?
Here are 7 steps you should take in converting irate customers to raging advocates –
1. Stay calm.
If someone is screaming at you, it is easy to get angry yourself. when dealing with an angry customer who is frustrated by a perceived failure by your organization being calm & composed is important.
Understand that in most cases the customer is upset with something that has nothing to do with you personally. Remain calm and treat them with respect. Your calm and respectful composition will help calm them down.
2. Empathize
When customers reach out for service, they want to be heard and feel like the person on the other end of the conversation truly understands what they’re going through.
In order to Empathize appropriately, it is important to listen actively to everything the Customer has to say (Even if he’s screaming)
Marketing is all about making believers out of nonbelievers, and making friends out of enemies. When you see things the customer’s way it’s easy to understand their complaint. Sympathize, apologize, and make it right — and you’ve got a loyal customer for life. – Franchesca Hughes (Marketing VP at Secured Loan Expert)
Empathy is like the oil that lubricates the engine which drives complaints resolution (Read: Empath & It’s role in complaint resolution). When you show that you care, customers respond well and remember you positively. That positive feeling stays with them and they remember it the next time they use your product.
3. Listen Actively
Respond quickly and clearly, demonstrating that you understand why they are angry. Many people get angry just because they feel ignored.
Learning how to listen actively is important not just in Customer Service but in interpersonal relationships as well. Don’t interrupt, finish sentences or put words into the speaker’s mouth, just listen. A simple nod here and there to show you’re paying attention would suffice until the speaker has finished communicating.
4. Apologize
Let the Customer know that you are genuinely sorry that for whatever the problem is (regardless of whether or not you think they are overreacting). And don’t make excuses or trade blame, it only worsens things.
Along with empathy, an honest apology can go a long way. Sometimes angry Customers just want someone to apologize to them for the bad experience.
5. Offer Solution
If you listened actively, you’ll have heard what the customer is upset about. DO NOT tell the Customer what you can’t do, tell the Customer instead, what YOU CAN DO to remedy the situation. Sometimes, you can’t fix the problem, but you can always find a way or an alternative to make it up to the customer. The degree to which you do so will go a long way towards converting your angry customers into advocates.
6. Take Feedback from their pain
The old adage, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” applies to complaint resolution. If one angry Customer tells you about a problem, how many experienced a similar issue and just didn’t mention it? (Passive customers)
Complaining Customers are most likely to remain loyal if their complaints are resolved effectively, and will even recommend your brand to more people, this creates a positive brand perception and makes the complaining Customer profitable
Take that feedback and show that you are listening through product improvements and ask them what they think after the improvements are made, this way the Customers feel valued.
7. Follow Up
Taking the time to follow up with the customers to ensure they are happy & satisfied with the resolution of their concerns is the next most important step to take after resolving a complaint.
Follow up on customer complaints even after resolution, it will prove to them that they’re important to your organization and that you actually care about them (Read: Why You Should Follow Up On Customer Complaints). This extra effort can make the difference between losing a customer or winning an advocate.
When Customers feel valued, service is perceived as being better and they’ll want to do more, including telling other people how great your products & services are!
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Good article, it shores up my thoughts on the matter of handling an angry customer. I have seen these principles worked in the field, in short, being calm, listens without interrupting, empathise, offer solutions, apologise and act towards resolving the issue, will calm down and satisfy an angry customer most assuredly.
This article also opens my eyes to the fact that angry customers will turn out to be better advocates than a
passive ones when there issues are properly resolved.
Thank you Amlin, i’m glad you enjoyed the article
What is the best way to speak to a customer who is swearing at you and calling you names? The senario being you are new to the company and unaware of the problems. You are offended by the way the customer is speaking to you. I stayed calm and politely asked the customer to not swear or call me names in order to get a full understanding of the problem. A month later the customer left, went elsewhere.
Hi Sheena, next time i recommend you allow the Customer to rant, don’t take any of the words personally. Eventually they’ll run out of steam, it’s important to empathize appropriately & listen actively to find out what the problem actually is, when the customer is done talking, apologize as genuinely as you can, and proceed to proffer a good solution or escalate if necessary. Onlookers will admire and appreciate your professionalism even if the Customer doesn’t. This can be hard on the nerves, but the outcome is worth it (go for a break if you have to after the customer has gone)
PS: You won’t be able to win them all, some Customers just decide to take their business elsewhere for reasons beyond our control
Completely agree Kelechi… Let them rant, and allow some of the emotion to dissipate before then empathising and dealing with the situation. Many call centre operatives (especially in the UK) seem to be encouraged to adopt a high-handed and holier-than-thou “if you continue to raise your voice then I will terminate the call” approach – which simply pours petrol on an already incendiary situation. There is a REASON the Customer is angry, and it’s almost always caused by YOUR organisation, YOUR product / service, or one of YOUR colleagues. Someone (please see what I mean by “someone” in my separate comment below, before flaming me!!) needs to take responsibility for that and make it better. Don’t just push it away to fester and grow – as it most certainly will – on one of the many internet complaint forums, where it will cost you dearly.
Absolutely spot on – a complaining Customer SHOULD be our best friend. Listen and we’ll learn something – but what a shame so many companies insist on being “in the right” first. Great article and thanks for sharing – I particularly like the elements you reference about empathy, and the human factors in dealing with an angry Customer. You might also like a process-orientated blog on Service Resolution that I published recently over at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/four-reasons-why-hopefully-worst-service-recovery-response-guy-boyd?trk=prof-post . Take care – I’m looking forward to reading more of your publications in the future. GB
I’m glad you enjoyed the article GB
I really enjoyed this article, excellent and practical advice, I’ve tried only 2 of these will now apply the rest very helpful, thanks
I’m glad you enjoyed the article Anitta!
Thank you souch for the article. You only get angry if you care and you feel you have been let down. I concur totally.
I think this is pretty accurate except the solution. Some cases I believe asking a customer what I can do for them to help take care of the problem is a better option. If we offer a solution we may be offering more then needed especially if you have many complaints. If we allow them to help provide a solution they also feel as though we not only listened we are striving to help them.
So… who is this “Someone” who needs to take responsibility? Something troubles me about a lot of these discussions, and it’s that so much emphasis seems to be placed on “how we train the Service Operative to deal with XYZ situation…”
Whilst that is of course critical when a service breakdown has already occurred, and it’s usually the front-line service provider clearing up the mess, organisations need to get their heads round one simple fact.
CUSTOMER DELIGHT IS A C-SUITE RESPONSIBILITY….
If end to end Customer Experience excellence is embedded in the DNA of the organisation, and is key to every decision across the entire value chain – from NPD, through Marketing, Sales, Delivery, Account Management and After Sales Service – then you’ll create Customer Loyalty and associated revenue and profit growth by default. You don’t need an army of cleverly-trained Call Centre warriors, soothing the brows of multitudes of angry Customers by deploying lots of clever “Service Tricks.” Sure, things will go wrong from time to time, and then you need good processes and skills to sort them out (or go the Npower route, obviously, and end up “downsizing” 25% of your workforce…) but Customer Loyalty is created throughout the value chain, and is a function of: a focused and service-orientated culture; great leadership at all levels; and well-crafted systems / processes / behaviours to make it happen.
Unless you’ve got all of that nailed down, no amount of Customer Service training will save you. Although the training providers will love you to bits – because you’ll have a huge turnover of frustrated and demotivated Service staff, creating a constant and lucrative demand for new-hire training 🙂
Wow! I agree Guy, driving customer service comes from the c-suite. Thank you for sharing these insights 🙂