When customers yell at you

I do a whole day seminar on customer service excellence.

I make it a point to share the philosophy behind why we do what we do. I provide opportunity for my participants to share with each other their personal customer service horror experiences as well as the pleasant ones they have encountered too.

As they work on this exercise, I can see the vivid and disturbed emotions begin to play on their faces every time they remember a bad customer experience and then I can also see them lighting up, the smiles forming on their faces every time they remember an encounter with someone who rendered excellent customer service. Through this exercise I get my participants to see themselves as customers and through this exercise I get to learn from them their first-hand experiences better than I could ever learn from books.

This is a testimony from a participant I will never forget.

Visibly shaken with emotions, she stood up and said, “one day a customer came into our branch. He had a problem with another company but needed our help to fix his. He was irate, he was annoyed and he was angry. The moment I told him there would be a delay, as security procedures demand clearance the customer went ballistic. No matter how hard I explained; this customer just wouldn’t listen. He screamed at me, he cursed, he cussed, he yelled at me. And if this was not enough, he raised up his arm, pointed me to his gold bracelet and said, “do you see this gold bracelet? This costs more than you and your entire personhood and existence. You are worth NOTHING!”  With that he stormed out of the establishment.

Now how do you deal with a situation like that?

I was curious. I asked her how she dealt with it.

The participant said she stayed calm. She did not fight back. She kept on saying, “I’m sorry I cannot help you but we are doing the best we can.”

In my book, this lady is the hero in the drama that took place during her watch because of the following reasons:

1. She kept her cool.

2. She kept her dignity.

3. She did not compromise company policy.

4. She did not blame anyone.

This is why she should be rewarded.

Everyone in the room applauded her. I did too. This is excellent customer service in action.

Now here is the revelation of the century: The customer is NOT always right. (duh!?) But it is not our job to prove them wrong. Our job is to serve them well.

I am one hundred percent sure this verbally abusive customer with the gold bracelet would have later on discovered that he was in the wrong and in losing his temper, he just made a fool of himself.

I do not expect this customer to go back to the establishment and apologize unless he shows class and dignity. But in this instance he certainly made himself many grade lower than the person he was degrading.

Whether you are with a store selling stuffs, with an insurance company selling policies or even with a bank transacting business, you need to remember that you are not in the retail, insurance or banking business. You are in the people business. And you deal with different kinds of people all the time.

Most of the people you meet in your work are courteous, decent and pleasant. Consider them your rewards for your work.Unreasonable and ugly monsters like the customer in our story are rare exceptions. Consider them challenges and tests on honing our people skills. Do not fail the test.

Learn to be patient. Famous book author Charles Swindoll says “Patience is a bitter plant that produces sweet fruit. “For all of us who are in the people business we need to be patient because once in a while, we ourselves are the ugly monsters in the story too.  

I would like to greet and thank the Association of Deans of Philippine Colleges of Nursing Inc. as they celebrate their 50th founding anniversary as they gave me a great opportunity to speak to them last week. May you produce more quality and caring caregivers who do not only good with their craft but who are excellent in their service as well.  

(Francis Kong will do a repeat of his highly successful ‘Culture of Personal Excellence’ on Nov. 26, 2009 at the Garden Ballroom of EDSA Shangri-La Hotel. For further inquiries contact Inspire Leadership Consultancy Inc. 632-6872614 or 09178511115)