Endear with an Angry Customer

A delivery that is late or incomplete, an order that has not been properly executed? It is logical that a customer starts to increase. How do you bring back such a dissatisfied customer? An angry customer is not an indifferent customer, so there is a lot to be gained. This way you limit the damage.

Really listen

Customers who are aggressive want to achieve a goal with their aggression. They radiate power, or hide the fact that they cannot or do not dare to do something. Roughly, there are 3 types of aggression you can face:

• Emotional aggression: People who blackmail emotionally and try to gain power with helplessness.
• Frustration aggression: People can become aggressive if they don’t get something (directly) that they feel is entitled to.
• Targeted or instrumental aggression: Sometimes people intentionally use aggression to achieve a certain goal.

Apologize

An angry customer always want to hear an apology from your side. So, do it. You acknowledge his or her frustration and indicate that you take the complaint seriously. After you have sincerely apologized for incorrect delivery, for example, the complainant will be more willing to give you more details about exactly what went wrong with the delivery. Record these details immediately. After all, you can collect additional information that can lead to you solving the problem satisfactorily.

When the fault is with you, admit it.

Managing a company or providing service is largely automatic, but it is also partly human work, of course, people sometimes make mistakes. You shouldn’t be ashamed of this, as long as you know how to solve it well! You can fully summarize the complaint, but after a while there will probably be bugs or other errors, this is often the case. Simply admit the fault is on your side.

Sell ​​the solution

Be nice and humble while dealing with angry customers. Make a proposal that your customer cannot resist. To avert a negative response, you can offer various options retentively and sell the best ones. If you let people choose from various options, they start thinking, so they don’t automatically respond with “no, that’s not good enough” or something like that.

Investigate the complaint

It depends somewhat on how long the angry customer wants to have a conversation with you, but if possible, keep asking until you know exactly how the fork is. After all, you can never fully guarantee such a customer that “it will not happen again in the future” if you do not know exactly what mistake you (or your supplier, employee, etc.) have made.

Provide a follow up

After you have made a clear appointment, you must of course also comply with it. That is why you immediately start to resolve the complaint and do everything possible to provide the customer with a good solution as soon as possible. If it takes longer, please let us know before the agreed term has expired. I recommend calling the customer back instead of emailing. This is just a bit more personal and you can immediately ask whether the customer has now been satisfactorily resolved.

Be proactive

The best thing to do is to perform a proactive customer service. After a product has been ordered, you can, for example, email or call to ask if everything went well. The customer will appreciate this, even if there are no complaints. If there are complaints or comments, you can immediately ask yourself and propose a solution. This ensures that your customers are satisfied and that you can resolve any complaints early.