Dealing With Difficult Customers

Coping with difficult people is a common part of running a business where you provide a product or a service to the public.

The purpose of this discussion is to enlighten you to methods of survival with some customer service tips.

As you read my story you may get ideas for your own business where you deal with various people who have different personalities.

I have had my share of dealing with difficult people in over 30 years of running my own business. I started out writing software for computers before IBM came out with the PC. So in 1982 when the PC came on the market I already had software that people needed.

That started me on a path of developing more software and eventually focusing on telephony software. Providing my phone systems to the public involved a great amount of public service and building customer relationships.

I learned proper business ethics along the way and the power of giving people what they want. That starts off with giving them clear and honest answers to their questions.

There were times when I needed to tell a customer my product is not right for them. I would have to discourage them from buying my product because I would feel that they may have problems understanding how to use it. Or in a more serious case when it is simply not the right solution for their needs.

If I would mislead them I would only end up refunding their money later. So may as well save both of us grief and focus on another customer with a better fit for the product. That's how I look at it.

Being honest about the situation is how a business relationship materializes between you and your customer. People want to get to know and trust one another.

Even if you turn down a sale to avoid a mismatch between product and customer, you may have a customer for life later when they come back for something that's a better fit later.

Potential customers want to feel comfortable with a vendor before laying out their hard-earned cash. They become comfortable when they find that they get honest answers to their questions.

Customer Service Skills

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can’t tell someone they’re not educated enough to use your product. But if that were the case we both would have hardships later if a sale were made to someone who couldn’t cope with it. It would be very difficult to satisfy that particular customer.

In my earlier years in business I found myself wasting a lot of time trying to provide support to people who could not follow instructions. As an example, let me tell you a humorous incident that happened to me…

I once had a customer who told me he wanted his voice mail feature removed from his phone system because he didn’t want his callers to be able to leave messages. His reasoning was that he just didn’t have the time to follow up with missed calls.

Well, at first I felt like giving him an education on business success, about how important it is to return all calls. But that's not what he wanted. He wanted to free up his time. So I explained to him that if I remove his voice mail, any messages he had would be lost forever.

In order to be sure there was no misunderstanding I asked him if he had any present messages before I remove the voice mail feature. He became frustrated and upset that I was questioning him and insisted that I just do it.

Well obviously I did it because I had to give him what he wanted. But lucky for me I sent him an email stating that I will remove his voice mail that evening and that if he has any messages he should listen to them before the end of business hours since they will not be recoverable afterwards. He once again became upset and shot back a quick angry email saying…

“JUST DO IT !!!”

Okay, so I did it. Reluctantly I might say. Once I remove the voice mail feature the messages are gone!

The next day he called, yelling at me “Where are my messages?”

All I could say was that per his request I removed his voice mail. He said he just wanted me to remove the voice mail and not the messages. I tried to explain that I confirmed with him that he understood there is no middle ground.

You take away the voice mail and you take away the voice mail messages. But he didn’t accept that. He became extremely irritated, yelling and cursing. Telling me that I destroyed his business because he had important messages from people and now he didn’t know who they were from. He threatened to sue me.

He sent me an email telling me to expect a call from his attorney. So I sent him back a copy of my email with my final request to listen to his messages before I remove them. And I included his reply were he confirmed... “JUST DO IT!!!.”

I asked him to provide that email to his attorney so that he’ll know how to handle this. I never heard from him again, or from his attorney.

There is no way out with dealing with this type of behavior. You simply need to keep clear records and copies of correspondence when dealing with difficult people.

You can’t give people what they want if they don’t know what they want and they are too stubborn or too busy to find out. That makes it really difficult in a service-oriented business.

And the only way around it is to try to determine ahead of time if there is a good match between the potential customer and the product you are selling. Sometimes it’s just not worth getting the business because there are people who will never be satisfied.

How To Gain Customer Satisfaction

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It helps to repeat yourself. And I never feel bad if I need to explain things over again when someone asks the same question more than once. To me it shows that they truly have an intent to “get it.” And that’s a good thing.

When you deal with lots of people, however, your time can easily be abused. You can’t give them what they want if you don’t have the time to do it. For a good business structure you need to free up time for your own creativity and keep everything else running smoothly.

In the early days (before the Internet) I used to keep track of the answers and explanations I gave when people asked questions and included them in updated user’s manuals for my products. After all, I figured any question one person had may be on the minds of other customers too.

So what better place to put those answers? To include them in the user’s manual makes it a better guide because it addresses known issues and questions that came from real-life usage.

Today it’s easier since customers can visit websites to do their research. It helps promote customer loyalty since they tend to come back when they want to review something on their own.

For that reason I constantly keep my website up-to-date by constantly making changes to various sections, sometimes immediately after hanging up the phone with an inquiring customer.

Almost all discussions I have with people enlighten me to something that is missing on my website that could help others. Or I discover something that is misunderstood and I go and update my website to improve the clarity of the misunderstood section.

Customer Feedback Surveys

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I also get feedback from customers to find out how they feel about my products and services. And I ask for suggestions as to what I can do to make their experience better. This is an indirect way of giving them what they way. If I don’t have it, at least I find out what I’m missing and I can work at including it later.

The use of the Internet today allows us to stay in touch with all customers with little effort. There are bulk email programs available that can be used to send surveys and monthly newsletters to all your contacts.

The only thing to remember is that you don’t want to Spam people. I only include actual customers and people who have contacted me for information in my bulk emailing. And if anyone changes their mind, I allow them to opt-out of future emails, even active customers. Yep, some customers just don’t like to get emails and I don’t blame them. If they don’t want emails, that’s fine.

Customer Relations

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With all the affairs of a service-oriented business you just may need to deal with silly things from time to time. That’s business. And it can’t always be avoided. Just handle those situations as professionally as you can and keep a record of troublesome situations in case you need to reference it later. Like the emails I sent to that customer of mine to confirm removing the voice mail messages.

Always focus on what people want. In every way! It will build a better vendor-customer relationship and it will bring you more business as time goes on.

Copyright © 2010 Glenn Stok