<h1>How to Handle an Irate Customer on the Phone</h1>

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!