Survival Tips for Call Center Newbies

Most call centers require at least 6 months on operations before newbies become tenured call center agents and enjoy benefits only tenured agents are entitled to. More importantly, only work experiences 6 months and up are worth adding on a resume as anything less really won’t count as work experience. That being said, unless call center newbies plan to be like grasshoppers jumping from one account to another, it is paramount that call center newbies learn survival tips to ensure they will last at least 6 months or hopefully much longer on the job and become tenured agents. This article presents some practical survival tips for call center newbies that can help them survive and maybe even thrive in the call center industry.

Survival Tips for Call Center Newbies

There are a myriad of pitfalls call center newbies should watch out for if they hope to survive their first six months. To simplify, we have grouped these pitfalls into 3 general categories which we will call 3M for Management, Metrics and Myself.

Management

Management laid out guidelines for every one to follow and expects 100% compliance. Infractions are all recorded on an agent’s profile and, depending on the severity of the infraction, management can impose penalties ranging from verbal warning for light offenses up to immediate endorsement to HR for severe offenses such as fraud and other ZTP (Zero Tolerance Policy) violations. As call center newbies, it would be best to avoid getting on management’s bad side. Be wary that during the first six months, newbies are being assessed whether they would be an asset or a liability to the account and management will not think twice letting go of liabilities. One reason we see call centers continuously hiring newbies is because they are also continuously firing bad eggs. Even light offenses can get newbies in a bad spot since verbal warnings can quickly escalate into written warnings all the way up to a final warning if a newbie’s bad behavior such as absenteeism, tardiness, non-adherence to schedules and other infractions are not corrected. And you guys already know what comes after the final warning so you don’t want to go there! Supervisors have a responsibility to weed out the bad eggs and ensure only newbies with the right work attitude make it past 6 months and become tenured agents. As a sup, I have very little patience for newbies who habitually go AWOL and I would not wait 6 months before letting them go. I go by the rule that says 3 strikes you’re out! I don’t have the energy to waste on newbies who don’t have the energy to come to work. Survival tip #1 for call center newbies: BEHAVE!

Metrics

In practically all call centers metrics is king! Metrics or Key Performance Indicators (KPI) measure a call center agent’s performance as far as call efficiency and providing excellent customer experience is concerned. Meeting or exceeding metrics determines whether the site keeps the account or closes shop. This is why management expects every one, newbies and tenured alike, to do their share in hitting the site metrics every month. Call center newbies are usually given a month or two at most to “find their groove” being newbies and all but are expected to be more consistent in hitting their metrics by the third month onwards. Trainors, nesting coaches and sups have done all they could to ensure newbies will perform well on the production floor and continuously monitor their progress. Failing to meet metrics consecutively or failing to show marked improvement in meeting metrics despite all the support they’re getting can spell doom for call center newbies. As a sup, I would go all out supporting and coaching any newbie who shows potential for improvement and is willing to learn, even if doing so gets me into trouble with my managers. Pit stops can’t save bottom performing newbies because pit stops are usually reserved for tenured agents. Bottom line, call center newbies have to perform well within their first 6 months or management will have no choice but to let them go. Newbie survival tip #2: MEET YOUR METRICS!

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Myself

Other than the various behavioral and performance pitfalls call center newbies need to watch out for to survive their first 6 months, there are also personal health, security and interpersonal issues newbies need to be aware of. Newbies also need to watch out for their own personal well being.

Personal Health Issues

Mainly because most offshore call centers work the graveyard shift, call center reps are prone to neurological and other health issues associated with unhealthy sleep patterns such as hypertension and aneurysm. We have written a separate article on Aneurysm and Night Shifts. Read it HERE. Diet also poses a health risk since break skeds run counter to our normal eating schedules i.e. we take our lunch at 2 in the morning when our digestive system normally would be in sleep mode. Obesity is also another health concern mainly because we tend to eat a lot because of the stress and then basically just sit on the job the whole shift. Sure we have a gym but honestly, not too many reps really bother to work out and burn carbs. And there’s also those high-caffeine, high-sugar energy drinks that’s supposed to keep us perky all night and make our hearts beat at 150 bpm . I’m a coffee person but I’m not into those energy drinks mainly because I get my coffee free so there’s really no sense paying extra for my caffeine-fix. Yeah right, I’m a coffee chugging cheapskate! And I would also stay away from those cup noodles because I fear what the effects of ingesting dissolved plastics will eventually have on the body. Working in a call center is usually stressful and some reps have used this as an excuse to turn to excessive smoking, alcoholism and sadly even drug abuse to relieve stress. Call center newbies are expected to be in tip top shape to be able to report to work every shift and take calls efficiently. As we mentioned earlier, attendance and metrics are vital to a newbie’s survival. As such, it would be best for newbies to stay healthy and steer clear of things that can adversely affect their health and performance. Newbie tip #3: STAY HEALTHY

Security Issues

In February of 2017, a 24-year-old call center agent walking along the Guadalupe Bridge in Makati on her way to her 5 a.m. shift was robbed at gunpoint and shot in the head. She was not the first victim nor will she be the last. Sadly, call center agents have long been vulnerable to criminal elements preying on these young helpless employees who had to brave the ungodly midnight hours to report for work. Speeding and drunk driving add even more risk to an already risky commute to work. Call center newbies should be street savvy and find the safest way to get to work. Walking alone along a dark alley at 2 a.m. is NOT safe. Use common sense to reduce your exposure to risk. Ride sharing with team mates is definitely one of the safest ways to commute these days. Never fall asleep in a public commute. Try to vary your routine or use alternate routes whenever possible since bad guys have a habit of stalking and studying their prey before attacking. It would also be a good idea if you can leave home a few hours early while it is still much safer to commute and then get some shut eyes in the sleeping quarters. Not only will you be safer, you also don’t have to worry about being late for your shift. Wearing flashy clothes and jewelry and displaying your gadgets while you’re on the road makes you a tempting target so don’t. Remember, you’re on your way to work and not attending a fashion event. And just in case you do find yourself face-to-face with the bad guy, DO NOT RESIST UNLESS YOU ARE CAPABLE OF FIGHTING BACK. These bad guys aren’t stupid. They know robbery is bailable but murder is not and they would try to avoid shooting anybody in the head as much as they can but they will shoot if forced to do so. Don’t give these perps the excuse to hurt you. If the perp is only after your bling, go ahead and give it to him. No amount of bling or gadget is worth getting shot for. Newbie survival tip #4: BE VIGILANT AND STREET SAVVY WHEN ON THE ROAD

Interpersonal Issues

Call center newbies joining a team are pretty much like neophytes joining a fraternity. That being said, newbies should avoid throwing their weight around if they intend to survive their first 6 months with their new team. It is paramount that newbies first try their best to impress their new team and prove that they are worth keeping on the team. Since they are still under assessment, newbies should use positive interpersonal skills to try and be on everybody’s good side because for one, newbies will definitely need a lot of help from their team mates “learning the ropes” during the first few months and secondly, it’s going to be up to the sup with the concurrence of the team if they would want to keep them newbies on the team. Throwing tantrums, acting like spoiled brats, frequent absences and tardiness, dragging the team stats down, arguing with team mates, flirting around, showing off and generally being a first class A-hole are sure-fire ways to get newbies booted out of the team. Call center newbies survival tip #5: BE AN ASSET TO THE TEAM.

Within the first 6 months working in a call center, the newbies should be able to tell whether this is something they would want to do for the long term or not. While it may be true that working in a call center pays well but for some, money isn’t the primary motivation. Within the first few months we can expect to see newbies dropping out of the program until finally only a determined few of the original batch of newbies remain to eventually become tenured agents. There are a lot of challenges and pitfalls call center newbies have to face working in a call center but for the determined few, we hope these survival tips for call center newbies can help overcome these challenges.

Thank you for your time. Have a wonderful shift!

Clarity over Accent

This will be short but blunt. A tweet by Filipino Broadway star Miss Leah Salonga just the other day about a call center rep who left a voice message which Miss Salonga could not understand because the words were “chewed up and garbled trying to sound American” underlines what we have been discussing all along about using a fake accent just to try and sound like a native speaker. For one thing, being a native English speaker is so much more than just accent. Being native involves idioms, phrases, nuances and other characteristics unique to the customer’s particular location. Furthermore, most customers already know they will be speaking with an offshore call center rep and usually would not mind that as long as they can clearly and effectively communicate with the rep and resolve their concern as efficient as possible. Customers can sense a fake accent right from the get go and may even trigger the customer to question the rep’s honesty and integrity. Customers will always appreciate clarity of communication over accent, especially if customers sense the rep is just faking the accent so please lose the fake accent!

Hats off to Miss Salonga, by the way, for being very polite with her tweet. She neither bashed nor said anything degrading against the rep or the call center industry. She merely reminded call center reps to “PLEASE ENUNCIATE! Clarity is everything” like a sup coaching her team. Although there were a lot of positive comments on social media regarding Miss Salonga’s tweet, it disappoints me to see some not so savory remarks. As call center agents, we have a responsibility to continuously improve ourselves and an important part of continuous improvement is the ability to accept constructive criticism like mature adults regardless who makes the criticism. Feedback and constructive criticism from our sups or from customers themselves point out opportunities where we can further improve ourselves so we should always have a healthy attitude towards constructive criticism. The day we stop improving is the day we stop growing professionally. Have a great shift!

RELATED ARTICLES:

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Brene Brown Empathy Video

I came across this video by renowned author and research professor BRENE BROWN  several months back and thought it would be appropriate to share Brown’s empathy video with you through this blog. Although there are a number of other videos available on the internet about empathy, Brene Brown’s Empathy video by far is the best one I’ve seen. The video is short yet concise. In the 3 minutes you’d spend watching the video, you would have a much clearer understanding what empathy actually is and why empathy is valuable as far as connecting with people is concerned.

Why Empathy

AER…AER… Ever since Training101, we’ve been taught to Acknowledge, Empathize and Resolve… AER… AER… As a newbie on training, I would go to bed with AER playing in my head. Later on, we were given a couple of canned empathy scripts we were required to say to customers along with a stern warning that failure to “recite” these empathy scripts would earn us an autofail from QA. And usually it’s 3 autofails and you’re out! The end effect here is that we would mechanically “recite” our empathy statement merely for the sake of QA and not necessarily for the customer’s benefit. This defeats the very purpose why we had to empathize. Why is empathy important in the first place? Empathy makes us human. In today’s age of Artificial Intelligence, talking to a live human being is probably the only reason customers still prefer waiting 15 minutes for a call center representative rather than quickly doing business with an automated system. Customers yearn for a human being to connect with and feel how upset and inconvenienced the customer feels with their service and how this connection can help both parties find the best resolution. As terrible as this may sound but the ability to vent out one’s frustration and to hear a human being empathize with their frustration is actually a blessing in disguise for call center representatives because customers cannot vent out their frustrations to a machine and expect to get any empathy. No algorithm has yet been developed to replace human empathy. So please be human when you empathize. Screw those canned empathy scripts! In an ARTICLE written by Katherine Reynolds Lewis for fortune.com, Bruce Temkin of Boston-based customer experience consultancy The Temkin Group stated: “You can’t script empathy. The right way to do it is to teach the agents about why you’re trying to show empathy, what is it, and why is it important. For empathy to be genuine, the agents must have autonomy over how they respond, and choose what course of action to take and what words to say. After all, even the best actor will sound wooden after 10 repetitions of a similar script.”

Brene Brown Empathy Video

In this short 3-minute video, Brene Brown talks about empathy and how it is very different from sympathy. Brene tells us how empathy fuels connection while sympathy drives disconnection. She comes up with 4 qualities of empathy, which are:

Perspective Taking

The ability to take the perspective of another person, or recognize their perspective as their truth.

Staying out of Judgement

Recognizing Emotion in Other People then Communicating That Emotion

Empathy is Feeling WITH People

Brene Brown illustrates empathy like when someone’s in a deep hole and they shout from the bottom, “Help, I’m stuck!” and we look down the hole and say, “Hey, don’t worry I’m climbing down to help you…” Sympathy on the other hand just looks down the hole and says, “Ooh! It’s bad huh?” but does nothing else to help ease the pain. Empathy is a choice and in order to connect with the person, you have to connect with something within yourself that knows the feeling of being in a similar situation. Sympathy simply silver lines the situation to try and make things better but the truth is rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is human connection.

Effective Empathy over the Phone

The term “empathy’ comes from the German word “infühlung” (from ein “in” + Fühlung “feeling”) first coined in 1858 by German philosopher Rudolf Lotze. Someone who has not actually “experienced” the suffering or sorrow that another is going through cannot have empathy for them, they can however have sympathy. Either way, empathy and sympathy are admirable characteristics. For empathy to be effective, it has to be appropriate to the situation and it has to be sincere. It is much worse to express an empathy statement inappropriately than to not express any empathy at all. I remember one particular call where a woman who was about to give birth called customer service complaining that she was unable to make calls with her phone. The call center rep empathized with a scripted “I understand exactly how you’re feeling right now…” which would have been fine except the rep was male and had never been pregnant so how in Zeus’ name could he “understand exactly how the pregnant woman was feeling right now”? If you cannot avoid being mechanical with your scripted empathy statements, might as well not empathize at all. As call center reps, it is only through the tone of our voice and with the words we use that we can express sincere and appropriate empathy so choose your words well. If you have not experienced a situation that will connect you with your customer, might as well be frank about it and, as the Brene Brown Empathy Video says, just empathize with a sincere “I don’t even know what to say but I’m glad you called me. Let me help you.”

I hope you enjoyed Brene Brown’s Empathy Video as much as I did. More importantly, I hope you learned a lot about what empathy really is and get to apply at work what you learned from this article. If you have friends and family who you feel can also benefit from this article, please SHARE this with them. Thank you once again for sharing a few minutes of your time to visit SUP CALL. Have a wonderful day!

Credits:
fortune.com
butterflyvoyage.wordpress.com
brenebrown.com

Why It Doesn’t Help Being an Irate Customer

Dear Irate Customer

Dear irate customer, I hope you’re having a great day today. I am writing this article in behalf of millions of call center agents and customer service reps, both local and offshore, whose only desire is to provide a happy customer experience for all our customers.

Being angry or irate never resulted into anything good. This is a fact. We’ve seen far too many times how irate driving results into road rage and bad accidents or how disgruntled employees or victims of bullying erupt into rage resulting in workplace violence or school shootings. Just recently, we’ve seen how one irate content marketer’s frustration resulted into tragedy at YouTube HQ. Anger never did nobody no good.

Why It Doesn’t Help Being an Irate Customer

Customer service reps and call center agents are continuously trained to help resolve customer concerns in the most efficient and professional manner. Let me emphasize “professional manner”. Whenever a customer calls in irate and starts cussing and spitting venom at a call center agent, the rep is expected to keep his cool and still perform his task in a professional manner. But being human, most reps can only take so much insult. Even though customer service reps are not allowed to talk back or be rude to the irate customer, the customer cannot expect the rep to just sit down and swallow whatever trash the irate customer dishes out. Here are some reasons why it doesn’t help being an irate customer:

The Mute Button

For call center agents who can no longer digest what the irate customer is saying and needs to blow off steam, the mute button is heaven-sent. Do irate customers really expect customer service reps to sit still smiling as the customer spits out language so foul it can make a sailor blush? Heck no! The rep puts the mute button to good use. Every time the line goes silent, there’s a good chance the rep isn’t exactly singing praises about the irate customer. And it’s no use for the irate customer to tell the rep not to go on mute because most reps are also quite proficient doing sign language with their fingers.

The Ultimatum

Most call centers have a policy against obscene callers and foul-mouthed customers that allows reps to respectfully release a call if the customer refuses to behave even after being warned several times. Obviously, this will only frustrate the irate customer even further and will surely be twice as irate when they call back. Long story short, unless the irate customer stops cussing and calms down, customer service reps will have no choice but to keep releasing the call instead of helping them.

Cussing Ain’t Gonna Help Getting Your Bill Settled

It’s not the call center agent’s fault that their service got interrupted after they missed settling the bill so why do irate customers give customer service reps such a hard time? Customer service reps are trained to help customers with their service NOT to argue or fight with customers. Customer service reps work within company guidelines and although reps would love to go the extra mile with their customers just to create a positive customer experience, reps still have to work within set guidelines. Turning their service back on without settling the bill is not within those guidelines and no amount of profanity can turn their service back on. No call center agent in her right mind would risk losing her job over a customer who keeps calling her a whore.

Why Should I Help You?

Have you ever tried asking anyone for help before? Normally, whenever we ask for help, we usually do it nicely with a smile so that we can have a better chance of getting the help we’re asking for. It’s no different when calling a customer service rep for help. Being nice to your rep usually gets your concerns resolved smoothly and efficiently and everybody goes home happy. But whenever a customer goes beast mode at the onset and starts calling the hapless clueless rep names I dare not even print, how enthusiastic do you think this rep would be to help the irate customer? I bet deep inside this rep is saying, ”Why the heck should I help you?” Perhaps the rep would be more enthusiastic to go ahead and release the call. Again, you’ll never get nothing done being irate.

Everything is on Record

Call center agents use a customer management tool to record and document everything that transpires between the customer and the rep on every call. This is so companies can have a better insight on the customer’s buying pattern as well as service issues. Usually, these recorded interactions provide the basis for any customer incentive or customer loyalty program should the company launch a customer loyalty rewards promotion. This same customer management tool also documents if a customer had been obscene, abusive to customer service reps or an excessive caller and are usually tagged or labeled as PEC (Persistent Excessive Callers) or something similar. This tag remains on the customer’s account and may result into the customer being ineligible for any future promotions the company may offer. Often, being tagged PEC also denies the customer the privilege to be surveyed for CSAT purposes. On rare occasions, recorded calls have been used to prosecute irate customers who persistently make grave threats against the company and their representatives. Often in irate customer sup calls, I would remind the customer that all calls are being recorded and advise the customer to ”refrain from making any further statements that the company might construe as slanderous and/or defamatory”. Sometimes, saying something that makes me sound like a lawyer from Boston Legal can knock some sense into an irate customer and helps them to quiet down. Sometimes, I just wish I can read the Miranda to an irate customer and tell them that anything they say can and will be used against them in a court of law but I’m pretty sure QA will red flag me for that.

The Customer Service Rep is Your BFF

The best person who can help you with your service is the customer service rep. We are your BFF! If you have issues with your product or service, we are accessible 24/7. We understand your concerns. We empathize with you. We have the tools and the know-how to offer solutions to efficiently resolve your concerns. But we can only help you if you work with us in a calm and professional manner. Yelling at us and calling us whores certainly doesn’t fall under being calm and professional. There’s absolutely no need to yell as we use only top of the line headsets and we hear you quite well. Degrading us degrades you as well. Long story short, being irate certainly will not help resolve your concern. So do yourself this favor: Whenever you pick up that phone to call customer service, remember that we are your best friends and BFFs help each other out. Help us help you. We can understand that you’re upset with your service but please do not take your frustration against your BFF. If you feel you’re too upset to call customer service, try to calm down first before picking up the phone. Cussing and being irate won’t do nobody any good.

Companies have safeguards in place to ensure that customers get excellent support whenever they call customer service. Customers have surveys such as CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) and WTR (Willingness To Recommend) they can use to rate how well they felt customer service took care of them. Today, the buzzword is Customer Experience or CX which takes customer satisfaction to a much higher level. Customers also have social media such as Facebook and Twitter to share feedback about their experience with a company. With all these tools available to them to ensure they get excellent customer service, customers really have no need to be irate and cuss and yell. Call center agents would rather help customers and get kudos for a job well done rather than be forced to release an irate customer without being able to help.

So dear irate customer, there’s really no point getting irate with your customer service rep. We are here to help you so please help us help you. Have a great day!

Best Ways to Handle Customers Who Ask Where You’re Located

“Where You At?”

This question sounds frighteningly familiar to practically every offshore customer service rep and, depending on your site’s policy regarding divulging your location, most would just gingerly say either “We’re offshore” or “I’m sorry we’re not allowed to tell you our location” and then wait whether the customer will go ahead and work with you or ask to be connected with somebody else or worse, ask for a sup.
I’m perfectly ok with “We’re offshore” in fact I use this quite often, but the “I’m sorry I can’t tell you where I’m at” spiel is just a bunch of BS like trouble just waiting to happen. How in the world do you think your customers can put their trust and confidence in you if you cannot even be honest enough to tell them where you’re located? If your site still has a Zero Tolerance Policy against telling customers your location, then I feel sorry for you and your site. Offshoring as a business practice had been going on since the late 80’s and most customers are already aware they will be speaking with an offshore rep even before they pick up the phone. In fact, most customers don’t seem to mind they’re speaking with an offshore customer service rep as long as they can both be on the same page and get the issue resolved efficiently.

”I’m Offshore”

Way back 2009 when I was a newbie handling hotel reservations, the account had a zero tolerance policy against telling customers where we’re at. It was a terminable offense to do so. I found this policy so frustrating considering most customers would always ask where I’m at since they will be making payments to book reservations using sensitive personal data such as socials as well as credit card info and I can certainly empathize with their concern. Telling customers we cannot divulge where we’re at usually results in customer asking to be transferred or just canceling the reservation. But the policy said nothing about saying I was offshore, so I found me a loophole and whenever a customer would ask where I’m at I would confidently and matter-of-factly state “I’m actually offshore AND we use the same SAFE AND SECURE payment system our US offices use. Which of our properties would you like me to help you with today?” Note that I used AND instead of BUT because I felt saying BUT at this crucial point makes me sound defensive and I don’t want to sound defensive when there is nothing to be defensive about. I immediately transition to going ahead with the transaction giving customer the impression that “Hey! I’m already here to help you. You can trust me. Let’s go ahead and do this!” Initially, my sup would warn me that I am bordering on ZTP with the “offshore” spiel I was using; QA would red flag me often for using a spiel that they have not approved. But that’s about as far as they can go unless they update their policy. Eventually, they allowed the “offshore” spiel especially after they saw it was working and customers were not asking to be transferred. Persistence does pay off!

Best Ways to Handle Customers Who Ask Where You’re Located

Talk Their Language

The first 10 seconds of the call will determine whether the customer will go ahead and do business with you or ask to be transferred. Your opening spiel should answer the customer’s question: “Should I go ahead and do business with this rep?” It will be helpful to learn to speak like a native English speaker and to speak it with confidence. Speaking like a native helps create an impression that you are on the same page with your customer. On the flipside, sounding tentative or insincere will create doubt in the customer’s mind, especially if processing payment is part of the transaction. Talking like a native alone should already be enough reason to convince your customer to continue the transaction with you.
RELATED ARTICLE: English Language Idioms

Reassure Customer about Personal Data Security

Today, more than ever, customers are increasingly becoming concerned about data breach and the security of their personal information. Personal data security is paramount in every customer’s mind. It isn’t so hard to understand why customers would have second thoughts about providing their personal data to a total stranger half-way across the globe. Using a confident tone, provide the customer your site’s commitment and strict adherence to personal data security. The sooner you reassure the customers about personal data security, the sooner they will trust you enough to do business with you.

Be Competent and Efficient

Customers value their time and expect customer service reps to respect that. Customers hate wasting time having to repeat information they have already provided. Any hint of incompetence and inefficiency within the first few minutes of the call will usually trigger the customer to ask for somebody else. Practice active listening and efficiency on every call.

Play By Ear

Not everyone who asks you where you're at has hostile intentions. Some are probably just curious while others may actually be just trying to start a friendly conversation. I remember one particular call from an elderly gentleman who asked where I'm at. Turns out the elderly gentleman used to be a Marine stationed in Subic Bay just North of Manila and he had fond memories of his stay in the Philippines. So, you really can never tell. Just play by ear and see where the conversation goes. Rule of thumb, let the customer initiate any conversation about where you're at.

Do Not Insist

You can’t win them all. Sadly, even today there are folks who still think people in third world countries wear grass skirts and live in caves or that offshoring took their jobs away. No amount of English communication skill or empathy can overcome this bias and convince these folks to do business with an offshore rep. There’s no point changing their perspective so don’t argue and don't insist. Simply follow your site’s policy regarding returning a customer back to the queue and politely release the customer.

If every call we get were easy calls, our shift would be so boring. Difficult calls and difficult customers challenge us to be better and push us to think outside the box. There is nothing more satisfying than receiving positive feedback from customers who proved difficult at the onset but eventually ended the call on a happy note. Next time a customer asks you where you’re located, use that as an opportunity to impress your customer and convince them that you are as good, if not better, than reps on the mainland.

How to Handle an Irate Customer on the Phone

We all get those irate customer calls practically every shift. There’s just no dodging them. For call center agents, an irate customer is almost always the rule rather than the exception. No shift is ever complete without receiving a call or two or three from your favorite irate customer. But if you think about it, the only reason customers call customer service is if they’re upset or unclear about their product or service- either they feel they’re being ripped off due to some discrepancy with their bill or the service or product they bought isn’t working properly. In a way, call center agents should even be thankful for irate customer calls because without irate customers, call centers pretty much would have no need to hire so many customer service reps. Irate customer feedbacks also provide an invaluable insight into what makes customers unhappy so that product and service providers can tweak improvements where necessary. And although it would be nice if they would, don’t expect happy customers to be calling you. No customer in their right mind would waste 15 minutes waiting on queue just to tell customer service how much they love their service. Happy customers can sing praises about their service on online surveys and social media forums but definitely would not bother calling customer service.

But here’s an interesting fact: as mentioned earlier, although most customers who call customer service are already upset or irate about their service, not all irate customers automatically become detractors. There are still a large percentage of these irate customers who eventually end the call on a happy note. In fact, a study by Customer Experience specialist Esteban Kolsky shows that as much as 67% of customer churn (discontinued service) could be avoided if call center agents handled the irate customer properly and resolved the issue during the first interaction. Handled efficiently and properly, irate customer calls are perfect opportunities for call center agents to meet or even exceed customer expectations and turn irate customers into promoters.

"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning."- Bill Gates

Why Handle an Irate Customer Properly

Customer Experience

One might argue a single detractor from an irate customer shouldn’t matter much, right? Wrong! According to a January 2018 article from superoffice.com, Customer Experience or CX is the new battlefield for customer loyalty where the customer’s perception of how a company treats them affects customer behavior and builds memories and feelings that affect customer loyalty. In other words, if they like your brand and continue to like your brand, customers will do business with you and recommend your brand to others. On the flipside, failing to handle an irate customer properly will result into a bad Customer Experience and negative word of mouth publicity. Statistics show that news of bad customer experience reaches more than twice as many people as news about good service. According to the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, one dissatisfied customer will tell as many as 20 people about their bad experience. According to Walker Info, by the year 2020, Customer Experience or CX will surpass product quality and price as the key brand differentiator. Any company who ignores this trend may wake up one day finding themselves without a single irate customer and no customer either.

Profitability

On average, a loyal customer can be worth as much as 10 times their first purchase. According to the Temkin Group, loyal customers are 5 times as likely to purchase again, 4 times as likely to refer and 7 times as likely to try a new product or service offering from the same company. Now that’s a lot of business from just one loyal customer! As much as 73% of consumers say friendly customer service representatives can make them fall in love with a brand. An American Express study reveals that 58% of consumers are willing to spend more with companies that provide excellent customer service. On the flipside, up to 78% of customers have bailed out or cancelled a purchase due to poor customer service and as much as 67% will switch to another provider. According to Zendesk, 95% of consumers have taken action in one form or another against a brand as a result of bad customer experience and 85% of these consumers have warned others against doing business with the brand. Up to 39% of consumers who had bad customer experience will avoid the brand for as long as 2 years and as much as 58% swear they will never ever do business again with the brand. Today, more than ever, companies are realizing just how much customer happiness can impact revenue and profitability. Bottom line, if companies want to grow their businesses, then they need to ensure customers are happy not just with product quality and pricing but, more importantly, with customer service.

Your Job Depends on How Well You Handle an Irate Customer

This one doesn’t need much explaining. In a nutshell, you don’t expect to last very long in an industry that puts a premium on Customer Experience if you cannot handle an irate customer properly and keep getting detractors and consistently being an outlier. There’s a high probability the account may let you go. A company would rather lose ten bad reps than one loyal customer. Call center agents are expendable; loyal customers are not. It’s just business.

How to Handle an Irate Customer on the Phone

Now that we have emphasized why it is crucially important for businesses to properly handle an irate customer, here are some recommended best practices for call center agents on how to properly handle an irate customer on the phone:

Stay Calm

Relax! It’s not your fault that the customer is irate so stay calm. Staying calm allows you to think more clearly so you can efficiently resolve the issue. More importantly, staying calm prevents your vocal cords from constricting and making you sound like a Smurf (or a Minion if you’ve never watched the Smurfs). You need to project an aura of confidence in your voice so your irate customer will feel confident that you can resolve the issue. The minute irate customers sense fear in your voice, they will eat you alive, so stay calm.

Tone

While it would be nice to maintain a friendly, enthusiastic tone throughout your shift, such a tone might not be appropriate when you handle an irate customer. Likewise, avoid sounding monotonous and disinterested like you don’t care. As a call center agent, you should be able to quickly switch to the appropriate tone as needed. Use a tone that projects empathy and confidence to let your irate customer feel that you understand the situation and are willing to help. Once the issue had been resolved and the atmosphere much friendlier, you can go back to being upbeat with your ex-irate customer while you try and fish for that elusive CSAT ace!

Talk Like a Native Speaker

It tremendously helps a lot easing the tension if the irate customer can speak with someone who talks their language. I don’t mean someone who talks English but rather someone who talks like a native English speaker mainly because the irate customer feels someone who’s native or at least talks like one will be “on the same page” with the customer ergo is in a better position to understand the situation. And I don’t mean talking with a fake accent either because customers can sense your fake accent a mile away and may even further upset an already irate customer so no fake accents please. Your irate customer probably already knows she’s talking with somebody offshore and it really wouldn’t matter to her whether you’re from Manila or Mumbai or Timbuktu as long as you and your customer are on the same page and understand each other.

RELATED ARTICLE: Talk Like a Native Using Common English Idioms

Empathize but Don’t Apologize

It’s would be helpful to empathize and let your irate customer feel that you understand her inconvenience but NEVER APOLOGIZE for something that was not your fault. Why would you apologize if it was not your fault in the first place? Besides, the irate customer called not to hear how sorry you are but to know how you can resolve the issue. I swear I can almost hear a lot of you say, “What? Don’t apologize?”. I know this runs counter to what training101 taught us, right? But let me ask you this: “How often has apologizing to your irate customer ended well for you?” The irate customer doesn’t give a hoot how sorry you are. They called for resolution not apologies. A suggested spiel should go something like this:
“I understand how inconvenient this issue has been for you and I will definitely help resolve this for you right away!”

Do Not Argue

Have you ever had an argument with your parents, your wife or husband, or with your girlfriend or boyfriend perhaps? Do you recall what usually happens when both parties go on the defensive? Usually the argument ends in a stalemate and nobody really wins. Same thing happens when you get defensive with an irate customer. Obviously, the irate customer won’t back down either and an argument erupts which usually leads to a sup call and one very bad customer experience. The best thing to do to avoid a stalemate in an argument with a customer is to not get into an argument at all. Remember that the irate customer is NOT irate at you (at least not yet) so do not take it personally and don’t be defensive. Allow the customer to first vent out her frustration. Don’t talk. Just listen attentively and get all the details why customer is irate. Eventually, your irate customer will run out of steam and should start to calm down. That’s your cue to empathize (but not apologize!) and give your customer the reassurance that you can definitely help resolve the issue. Based on personal experience, I will never ask an irate customer to calm down because doing so will only backfire and blow up in your face. It would be much better to just listen attentively and let her vent out her frustration.

RELATED ARTICLE: Rockstar Call Center Agent Best Practices

Be Efficient

Even before the customer picks up the phone to call customer service, chances are the customer is already upset. Customer waits on the queue for 15 minutes listening over and over to a machine as her frustration grows by each passing minute. She finally gets to speak with a customer service rep she can barely understand who keeps asking her questions and making her repeat herself. Frustrated, she asks to speak with a supervisor. The rep says please wait sup is currently engaged on another call, puts her on hold for about 5 minutes and then the line goes dead. Fuming mad, the irate customer dials customer service again and after another 15 minutes waiting on queue, you get her call. Lucky you! This story is all about what an efficient call is not. Being efficient on a call means there is effective communication between you and the customer so that you both clearly understand each other and customer never has to repeat herself. Efficiency means you are able to accurately resolve the issue as quickly as possible using all the tools at your disposal so that customer can go on with her day and other customers on the queue don’t have to wait too long. Efficiency means never having to place the customer on unnecessary holds and instead keeping the customer engaged. The worst calls I remember taking are calls from really irate customers who had to call again because some other rep had hung up on them and I end up taking the flak.

RELATED ARTICLE: Listening Skill Improvement Tips

First Call Resolution

According to a study done by Customer Experience (CX) specialist Esteban Kolsky, as much as 67% of consumers who discontinued service after they got irate said they would have stayed with the service if only customer service resolved their issue within the first call. This statement alone should be more than enough incentive for companies to emphasize the importance of First Call Resolution and empower call center agents with the necessary resources to ensure FCR on every call. Can you imagine how frustrating it will be for an already irate customer to have to call again and repeat the same information multiple times to resolve the same issue? First Call Resolution demands that we keep the customer engaged on the call while resolving the issue and avoiding any need to transfer the customer or for them to call back about the same concern. If a case needs to be created for the issue, provide customer the ticket number and advice the customer you are creating the case for their own convenience so that they won’t have to call anymore and only need to wait for a call back from the case team as soon as the case is resolved. Provide a reasonable time frame to set customer’s expectation and stick within that time frame. There’s still a fifty-fifty chance a customer may call back after the ticket had already been created but that’s entirely the customer’s choice. Just advice the customer that the case is still in progress and reiterate the timeframe.

These are just a few recommended best practices call center agents can use to properly handle an irate customer. I tried to keep this as short and as simple as possible so you all can easily follow these practices. I also provided some compelling data just to emphasize to you how important it is to properly handle an irate customer. Modesty aside, I have always found it more satisfying to get an ace from an irate customer who believed and worked with me in resolving an issue. I hope you will also find success using these helpful tips.

Credits to the following for providing valuable stats:
https://www.superoffice.com
https://www.providesupport.com

Again, thanks a bunch for dropping by. Have a great shift!