MarketingProfs has 242,471 members, and I love 242,468 of them. A few are jerks.
I communicate by email and phone with a huge number of our customers, and once in a while someone knocks me sideways with hostility. As much as I’d like to sometimes, I know NOT to respond with an equal “up yours” attitude.
Here’s a perfect example: Today I got a white-knuckling message from a gentleman who forgot the correct email address he used when he registered on our site. Allow me to share…
I am angry as hell.
Tried your service for 1.5 days, after subscribing. Then tried to unsubscribe within the week and you still billed my credit card. AND your system, if it’s not a scam, does not recognize either of the only 2 email addresses I ever use.
If you do not re credit my credit card with the $$$ you scammed off me I will make it my mission in life to have your site shut down.
Or failing that (coz I see you laughing) you will be amazed at how much damage I can do to your customer base via the internet.
Don’t try me.
Just re credit my account and you will not hear from me again.
If you’ve read this far, I bet you are mentally writing this guy a reply of your own. It’s got a choice obscenity or two. A verbal smack in the chops, right back at ya, mister. Or maybe it drips with brilliant sarcasm.
Forget it — that never solves a thing (although crafting well-slung dirt does make me feel better for a few seconds, even though I end up deleting every word). You have to be nice in your response, no matter what. Okay, let’s say CIVIL instead of nice. And brief, definitely. Like this.
Hello, Simon –
You signed up on our site as [correct email address here]. I’ve refunded your membership fee and removed you from our member list. Thanks for trying us out!
Regards,
Shelley
Customer Service Samurai
The strongest front-line brand ambassadors for your company might be in customer service. It’s easy for them to talk to the normal people.
Think about this: What do you want them to say to the rest of them? My three rules are
- Say nothing at first. Take a few minutes to calm down.
- Never respond with anger or sarcasm. Jerks expect that, and they’ll escalate the situation.
- Send a brief, clear, civil reply. This doesn’t mean you’re a wimp, it means you’re a professional.
Funny thing is, when I follow these rules, the customer almost always apologizes for being a jerk. Go figure!
Got any more to add?
I’m thinking this guy is a good candidate for medication and/or sedation.
I ran a small company division before and I know it’s hard to take the high road and not sink to the lowest common denominator, but you’ll always feel better in the end and be able to sleep at night.
Shelley, you’re a true professional! One line I use in my customer service training workshop is:
“The customer isn’t always right. But, the customer is the customer.”
I take no credit for the line – I found it years ago in a customer service book, the name of which evades me now.
The hardest part is separating ourselves from these jerky customers. It’s not about us. But when we’re having a bad day or we rushed through horrendous traffic to get to work, we are vulnerable to this display of rude behavior. It takes real discipline to respond positively sometimes, but it’s always worth it.
Sales and Marketing Magazine just ran an article in which I address this very thing:
“When You Look in the Mirror, What Do You See?
“People’s view of a brand is based on their last experience
“That’s right. You are the face of your business, whether owner or employee; the face of your image, whether mom or dad, friend or foe; the face of your volunteerism, whether a museum or a cause…
“Although there are exceptions, such as WalMart, where its customers usually shop price, people’s exception of a business, a relative, a friend or an enemy represents brand image. And the image most often comes from personal interaction with another person.”
Shelley, you are a brand heroine.
He sure told you where to go.
I have coached teams for years not to engage in email road rage and regardless of the ‘incoming’, always treat the ‘outgoing’ as, “thanks for your note!”.
I’ve also heard similar riffs off of this old saying, but the one that works for me is, “The customer is always right. Unless the customer isn’t. If the customer isn’t right, then they’re not your customer.” This means that when the customer is wrong, they’re wrong for good reasons — they’re not the kind of customer you need. They take up too much of your time, don’t produce enough to make up for their costs, and generally don’t fit in the customer base you’ve designed your company around servicing. It’s perfectly OK to fire a customer when that customer doesn’t fit.
Shelley – Your response is the picture of grace and restraint. Good job.
Thanks for the comments, all.
Stephen, now and then I think about firing a customer, but it ain’t easy in this situation. (Thank you for visiting our website — now please, go away?)
One time a guy called and had so many dumb questions about joining, I gently told him he shouldn’t become a member. He was so surprised, I think he dropped the phone.
You’re right, it’s easy to spot the wrong kind of customer, but it’s tricky showing them the door sometimes, especially with grace and aplomb.
Shelley your response was perfect. No doubt if you had responded in kind, he would have immediately fired off a post on his blog about how ‘All I wanted to do was cancel his MP sub, and look how THEY ATTACKED ME when I tried to!’. Which would have set off a firestorm among other bloggers about how MP ‘attacks’ its customers when they try to cancel their subs.
Again, you gave the perfect response.
Shelley your response is brilliant.
Having worked as a Resolution Supervisor for a major airline in reservations I would have probably taken it a step further with.
“I understand your frustration and I appologize for any inconvenience we’ve caused you.”
Kissing ass usually difuses the situation quickly. However I had to talk to these jerks on the phone.
Perhaps I should add a fourth rule:
BLOG ABOUT IT.
Aaaaaahhh! There, I really feel better now.
Some people just look for reasons to be upset. Actually, they look for reasons to justify whey they feel upset inside themselves. We can’t be responsible for their ’stuff.’ But we can help them stay away from our businesses.
When I ran a customer service department, I told all of my folks to “kill them with kindness”. We got some really, really upset folks from time to time and the goal was always to diffuse the situation without leaving anything for them to cling to and use against us. We were always honest and courteous, but we always tried to “kill them with kindness”. More often than not, it worked too. We turned a lot of angry folks into evangelists for our product.
Sometimes customer service is icky work, but I actually took quite a bit of pride in “talking them down off the ledge”. I had very few jumpers and I was proud of that. There were calls that I had to get up and go for a walk afterwards, but they were usually few and far between. Usually somebody called in a moment of anger, before thinking, and then settled down pretty quickly. We actually got lots of letters from people thanking us for our calm when they were so upset. I kept a file for our department of what I called “love letters”. After 5 years with the company, that file was pretty thick.
Shelley- you done good! Now tell the boss you need a raise!
Shelley, great post. I’ve dealt with some people like that, but never felt great about it afterward because I felt like I could have handled it differently/better/whatever. This is definitely a great example of what to do. :]
Kristen
Shelley, your 3 rules are also perfect to follow offline when some jerk says or does something to upset you. I see you added a 4th rule in a later comment – blog about it.
Over the years, I’ve found a good way to diffuse my anger or frustration is to write a note to the offending person – calmly saying why you think they wronged you, or why you think they’re being unreasonable or unfair. Get it all out on paper (or computer screen).
But here’s the key — DON’T send the note. Throw it away, or keep it tucked away in your computer.
The very act of writing it is a good way to vent and to diffuse anger and frustration — both of which are wasteful and harmful uses of energy and emotion. It lets you go on with life unfettered by anger.
Hey, David! I’ve followed that advice before. And I ended up divorced anyway.
Oops. There are exceptions to almost every rule.
I actually would’ve handled it a little differently. Here’s what I would have done:
a) Ask him if he had login problems (what happens, etc.)
b) Explain *why* he would have been charged
c) Advised him that I would be more than happy to credit
These emails, while rude, do require doing just a little bit of fact-finding to see if it is something that can be addressed by the org.
your response to the guy’s tantrum is absolute perfection.
I used to write the really angry reply and then put it away for a day or two before discarding it. But that is a waste of negative energy so I stopped doing that.
Blogging is a much better release!!
Shelley -
Hitting “Send” while white rage courses through your veins may give a quick jolt of satisfaction, but soon it wears off and sober remorse sets in. Too late, alas!
When I was a child – third grade or so – my parents had my siblings and me memorize a quatrain from the Rubiyat of Omar Khayam, a short poem which I didn’t quite understand at the time, but which has since become a mantra in my life. I repeat it here for your delectation:
“The Moving Finger writes, and having writ,
Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
I like it so much I’ve titled my autobiographical musings The Moving Finger. And I don’t mean the middle finger.
Jim Kelly
Rage or no rage, there’s a right way to deliver service, and then there’s another way. I was having trouble with a digital phone today, and here’s the help I received:
“We would recommend to designate approximately 40 kbps for both upload & download bandwidth speeds for each extension. This is important because voice quality may be compromised if there is insufficient bandwidth to support all of the nodes in the network. Another thing to consider would be router configuration. If you have a commercial type router, it is possible that it would have QOS (Quality of Service) which would prioritize RTP (Real Time Protocol) over regular Internet browsing requests. For best voice quality results, we would recommend SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection)and VPN Passthrough
(only if VPN is not used on your network) to be disabled, and to open UDP port 15044.”
That moving finger should be smacked with a stick.
Hi Shelley,
Thank you for a good post; one that addresses a common business problem. Unfortunately, there are times when people focus all of their built-up frustrations on the next person they encounter. Or, they’re spoiling for a fight. In either case, it’s better not to get down on that level.
As Tim Jackson put it so well: “Kill them with kindness.” Great advice. Many times that defuses a bad situation and mollifies an angry person very well. Regardless, remaining calm and keeping one’s equanimity is the professional thing to do.
Congratulations on keeping your cool and taking the high road, Shelley. Way to go!
Hi Shelley,
Yikes! That was a terrifying response to your inquiry about the phone. I think they could’ve “dumbed it down” for the general user…or at least tried to give clearer directions on how to resolve the problem…
Shelley,
You did a great job breaking the response down to three simple steps… (and keeping your cool). The 3 steps should be posted above every business person’s desk.
Doesn’t it always feel better when we take the high road? I particularly like the “I am SOOO good” feeling I get when I know I behaved professionally when others did not. ” I cant always control what happens, but I can always control how I respond to it.”
Great post– and great customer service.
Good Luck,
Jo
Shelley – I think that your response to “Simon” was great,but Damon makes a good point about getting to the root of Simon’s problem.I suspect that all of us – even the nicest of people we want as customers – can get frustrated enough to lash out as Simon has. Most of us DON’T send the e-mail or scream at the CSR, but we may be tempted. So, for first response it might be good to take the Damon approach and see if you can salvage a relationship.
Maureen, Damon, everyone –
Maybe my original post wasn’t clear. SIMON WAS USING THE WRONG EMAIL ADDRESS. There was nothing to troubleshoot. The error was his, then he acted like a nincompoop. Frankly, I’m not interested in salvaging a relationship with a customer like that. My experience shows that people like Simon waste a lot of my time and attention. Golly, just look at the time we’ve all spent on the guy right here!
Kill them with kindness and slay them with sympathy…apologies are free! Never, ever let them see you sweat or get a knot in your underwear over them.
If it is possible to determine if there is a problem with your delivery system in fulfilling your customers’ expectations, any feedback you can salvage from their bad experience does offset the loss of this individual. What we are not taught in school or in the business world is that it is more than OK to loose a bad customer. Even though we live in a dumb downed, sissy, socialist society, we still have the ability to choose who we do business with and who we do not choose to do so.
In my experience, some people are “naturally” this way as an attention-getting mechanism…BUT others are “manufactuered” by previous negative customer service experiences they received at the hands of other companies. The reason you get apologies from people like this is because previous abuse from other customer service people forced them to approach you with brute force. When you appropriately responded, they realized that it wasn’t necessary in your case…so they apologize.
But there is no question that there are some real “beauts” or should I say “brutes” roaming the earth.
“In my experience, some people are “naturally” this way as an attention-getting mechanism…BUT others are “manufactuered” by previous negative customer service experiences they received at the hands of other companies. The reason you get apologies from people like this is because previous abuse from other customer service people forced them to approach you with brute force. When you appropriately responded, they realized that it wasn’t necessary in your case…so they apologize.”
Great point, and it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes between the guy that is just wanting to be a jerk, and the one that’s defensive based on previous bad experiences.
If it’s the latter, and you give him a completely different response than he was expecting, more often than not, you’ll quickly covert an angry customer into an evangelist.
But again, it’s often hard to tell what type of customer you are dealing with.
Hi Maureen,
My post wasn’t an attack on what you did per se. My personal approach, even if it is one you disagree with, would be to try and salvage the relationship first. Even if the guy was a jerk, a simple response back letting him know what to do could have saved him.
Here’s another tip: When writing to a customer, get their NAME right.
I work at a great, very expensive hotel and the former manager, who was incredibly good at what he did (and much loved by staff, as well), told us once how he dealt with unhappy guests. No matter how ridiculous their complaint or how insane their over-reaction — “There were only five towels in the bathroom, not six!” — he would begin by mirroring back their feelings, deliberately exaggerating them. If the guest said that something was terrible, he’d say it was horrible, deplorable, dreadful, intolerable — and then, of course, do what he could to fix the problem. He said it was the sympathy, though, that did the trick 95% of the time — and he was dealing with some *very* demanding people. He made it a game, and it genuinely amused him.
Of course, you’re not going to put this sort of energy into soothing jerks if you don’t want them as customers, anyway. But nice, nice, nice almost always works. Go, Shelley.
Oh Shelley,
I wish I’d seen this last week. I did exactly the wrong thing–in spades–sending a searing email back to a very rude person who hadn’t even sent the original note to me. I was merely cc’d on the original note, but I wanted to defend the recipient.
My ‘cleverness’ backfired in sooooooo many ways:
1) the original sender escalated things, told me I was rude and disgusting, and cc’d the person he thought was my boss, accusing me of violating my organization’s email policy;
2) the reason he was so upset was that I used ‘colorful’ language;
3) others cc’d on the email thought I was nuts (oh yeah, I complicated this insanity by continuing to cc everyone else who was on the list, several of whom I didn’t even know) [can it get worse? oh yes it can];
4) the person I tried to defend? She then distanced herself from me, and asked me to take a year off before contacting her again!
I’ve been in business way too long to make such an amateur mistake like this, but the original note was so nasty–it set me off.
So I’m here to say: take a deep breath, heed Shelley’s FABULOUS advice, and kill them with kindness. (In the end they probably just really need a hug.)
I remain, your chastised servant,
J
Damon, I’m totally with Shelley on this one. (And sorry Tammy, I don’t believe Shelley should have sucked up when MP had nothing to apologize for. Of course if MP was in any way responsible for the issue then abject, grovelling ass-kissing is perfectly legitimate.)
If Simon is the kind of customer MP wants, he’ll calm down, feel a bit embarrassed for his unwarranted outburst, and join up again (hopefully with ‘one of the only two emails he ever uses’ this time).
What I’m saying is that if you can’t be sincere, don’t apologize. Do what Shelley did, and respond with professionalism and accuracy. And thus give customers of dubious value the opportunity to prove whether they’re worth having. If they reconnect (apologize/sign back up/whatever.) THEN kill them with kindness.
Oh my gosh, J! I feel for ya.
Email is like a pistol — something we shouldn’t touch when we are angry or drunk. Ever.
I’m actually commenting on something Ann H. said in her ‘readers note’ in reference to Shelley’s experience.
Ann said:
“Even if you aren’t in customer service, chances are you know someone who is.”
One thing I’ve come to learn is that ALL of us work in customer service. We just deal with different customers. Consider the person in a large company who may not deal with ‘customers’ directly but still has to please any number of internal customers. Or a parent, for that matter!
I think if ‘cranky customers’ thought about it that way, they might treat “customer service” professionals the way THEY’D like to be treated…because THEY’RE on the ‘other side’ too, every day.
[ Then again, as you noted, cranky customers often aren't "thinking" at all, so this might be *wishful* thinking. ]
I’m not making any earthshattering insight here, I know.
Shelley wrote: “That moving finger should be smacked with a stick.”
I think it’s important to know who you are dealing with. As an IT manager (yes, fancy that – an IT manager reading a marketing blog…) the answer given would be perfect for me. QoS, VPN and UDP all mean something to me and it’s exactly the language I need to fix the phone fast. All too often I’m dealing with the opposite problem – Damon’s “dumbed down” version given by the front-line staff.
When it starts I’ll say something like, “Yes, I’ve tried that. I work in IT and I’m phoning because I’ve already exhaused my common sense, my years of experience and training, the manual, the FAQ on your website, and all the relevant Google searches I can think of – can you please transfer me to one of your technical staff?” And they continue to waste half an hour of my time on an international call asking, “have you plugged the cable in?” before they admit, “Oh, I’m going to have to transfer you to someone in our IT department.”
It takes some discipline to remain calm and rational when that happens to you for the fifth time in one day. Understand that when a customer comes to you in a bad mood it may not be entirely about you – it may be the four customer “service” departments they’ve just finished dealing with. Are you really sure you want to kiss that customer good-bye?
Tim, your point is well taken.
For what it’s worth… I told that service rep for the digital phone company, “This reminds me of that commercial where the guy is going to do an appendectomy on himself while a surgeon explains it on the phone.” (I didn’t slam her silly for sending an incoherent reply.)
It turns out that she is a supervisor there, and I’m delighted to say that she decided to instruct her team to start asking customers about their comfort level with technology before diving into the techno-jargon.
Also, it turned out that NONE of her advice made any difference. The problem was a headset that wasn’t compatible with the phone. Whew!
I think in that sort of business, customer service is a special kind of hell because of the vast spectrum of things that can go wrong. The problems that MarketingProfs members encounter are WAY easier for us to resolve, thank goodness! Forgot your password, baby? That’s a cinch.
Shelley,
You handled the situation with such aplomb and grace. If you don’t mind, I’d like to print out your response to help my daughter in handling her customers. She’s somewhat new as a business owner. (Her company is Jahqoi). She goes out of her way to offer top-notch customer service, but when she gets the occasional ‘jerk’ customer, it really affects her.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
That’s fine for emails when the internet is your buffer, but for customers in person it’s a different thing. Don’t believe me, hang out at a fast food joint for a day observe customers rude treatment of people trying to serve them. I’ve done it as a weekend job for many years until I just had to leave after a couple of them started being physical abusive towards me. I also hate that they send bad reviews to corporate when they don’t get what they want like free food or a big discount. Luckily, we have cameras but Corporate still gives them a free meal and apology. This encourages bad customers to continue acting badly.
Shelly, your 3 rules for handling situations and customers like these are the simply best. The problem however is that sometimes emails such as that one or similar behaviour can get you so worked up that you fail to stop first, calm down, and then send an email that is polite and nice, inspite of how nasty the email they sent you is. I normally say what I want to say when I want to, I am very quick to react, and I used to find it difficult to take a step back and compose myself before replying when I get a nasty email with unreasonable behaviour or comments. This was mostly when I was working in the corporate environment where some people can be super jerks. However, now that I run my own business, I have been forunate enough to have very pleasant clients. That email resonated with my experience when I was working for a corporate, thanks for sharing it.
Nikki, I’m glad this article still has a heartbeat!
Thanks for your comments.