Conflict Prevention and Management

Defusing Difficult and Angry Customers (available in English and Spanish)

Welcome to our Defusing Difficult and Angry Customers Workshops.  Challenging customer services situations can start with a difficult situation or ill-tempered customer.  However, no matter how it starts, a rude, unhappy, unreasonable or hostile customer can have a profound impact on an employee motivation and performance.  And once the negative ball gets rolling, it takes specialized conflict resolution skills to create a positive outcome.  

Why Train on This Topic?

It can be 30 to 40 times more expensive to acquire new customers than to manage existing ones.  In fact, in some industries, a 5% increase in overall customer retention equates to a 25 to 55% increase in profits.  At the same time, businesses can not sacrifice the integrity of their employees in order to satisfy extreme or abusive customers.  This seminar simultaneously maximizes employee retention and customer satisfaction by providing employees and managers with the conflict resolution skills they need to prevent, diagnose, and effectively resolve difficult customer interactions.

Why Use Us?

This program is the only one we know of developed by a clinical psychologist with over 15 years of corporate experience.  This dual expertise allows us to address both the needs and perspective of the profit-driven employer as well as the individual needs and perspective of the employee or manager under fire.  We help supervisors and employees deal with the stress of customer service and the frustration of irate customers at the same time we are helping them develop the skills set to turn these challenging customers into loyal fans.

Length of Training: Seminars can run from 1-2 days (1.5 days seems to be best)

 Does your staff this training? Consider the following scenarios and the questions that follow it.

Sample Course Scenario:  Customer: "I am sick and tired of YOU PEOPLE sending me this invoice every month.  This is the third time I’ve called about it and your employees have consistently treated me rudely.  Here – I wrote down that last guy’s name – John Martel.  Are you just going to let him get away with that?"  As a customer service manager, how do you respond?  How do you balance your concern for the customer with your concern for the employee?

 Sample Course Scenario: You have barely started your shift and, medications in hand, are about to look in on your first patient. As soon as you walk through the door, the patient's spouse confronts you for taking so long. He says his wife has been asking for pain medication all day and received none. Angrily, he vows to complain to the site director.  Start your conversation with the family member from this point.

·      What’s the best way to handle a personal attack?
·       How can I effectively shift the customer’s focus from the problem to a solution?
·       How do I keep from burning out or letting customer hostility get to me?
·       How do I deal with hostility over the telephone?
·       How do I handle customers who grill me about an employee’s mistakes?
·       What are clues that an angry customer is about to become violent?
·       What can I do to keep hostility from turning into a confrontation?
·       How do I turn problems over to my supervisor in a way that doesn’t set him or her up or cause him or her to doubt my competence?
·       What triggers difficult customers and how can I avoid unintentionally adding fuel to the fire?

Does your customer service staff know the answers to the above questions? Call us at 858-481-8625 and we'll teach your staff:

·       How to recognize and avoid customer or client “hot buttons”
·       How to recognize and manager their own feelings when dealing with difficult customers
·       How and when to refer “up”
·       How to address both the feelings and the content of the complaint
·       How to transition between a focus on the problem to a focus on the solution
·       How to identify and deal with different types of hostility
·       How to deal with hostility over the phone

Need harassment/discrimination prevention training for your employees? Check out our award-winning Appropriate Workplace Behavior course for managers and employees.