How Demanding Extras Can Undermine Service Quality

It's interesting to read other people's customer service stories.

There's often a valuable lesson involved. But, I'm also fascinated by how these stories are written. They typically follow a three step logic process:

  1. The author is a perfectly normal, reasonable customer.

  2. Company X does something astonishingly bad.

  3. Don't be like Company X.

It's the first point, "The author is a perfectly normal, reasonable customer" where many of these stories go off the rails. 

Unreasonable Customers

Here's an example from a well-respected author. She detailed a service failure where she was dining with her husband and had ordered a glass of wine with her meal. The author explained that she drank all the wine before finishing her meal, so she asked her server for a little more.

The author expected the wine to be free. 

She was incredulous that the server wanted to charge her for an additional glass of wine, even though she didn't want a full glass. 

The point of her story was about empowering employees to assess the situation and provide extras when warranted. It's a good point.

But, the author also did what many customers do. She undermined her own service experience by demanding something extra and then getting upset when she didn't receive it.

She hurt her credibility by writing about it as if her server was clearly in the wrong.

 

What Should Customers Reasonably Expect?

A customer's perception of service quality is a function of how the experience matched the customer's expectations. On a basic level:

  • Good service is when the customer's expectations are met.

  • Outstanding service is when the customer's expectations are exceeded.

  • Poor service is when the experience falls short of the customer's expectations.

This makes expectations crucial to customer service. A customer with unreasonable expectations is much more likely to receive what she perceives as poor service.

So, what's reasonable?

On a broad level, customers can reasonably expect to receive the products and services that a company promises to provide. 

It gets trickier when a customer wants something that's not explicitly promised.

Let's use the author's restaurant example. The restaurant sold wine by the glass. If a guest orders a glass of wine, it's reasonable that she would expect to receive a glass of that wine at the price listed on the menu.

It would also be reasonable to say that if there was something wrong with the wine, the customer could immediately send it back for a replacement without being charged.

But, what about asking for more than a glass of wine but less than two glasses?

The author made it clear she would be willing to pay for a second glass of wine if she had wanted that much. But, she wanted less than that so she expected it to be free. She requested what essentially amounted to a free sample or a bonus portion.

Some restaurants actually address this directly. A typical glass of wine contains five to six ounces while a taste of wine (like you'd get when visiting a winery) is usually about two ounces. So, a few restaurants have glass and taste prices for wines on their menu. (This restaurant apparently didn't have this option on the menu.)

I don't fault her for asking. But, I think the author was wrong to be upset when she wanted something that the restaurant never promised her.

 

Where Do Expectations Come From?

Just as the author was being unreasonable to demand free wine, it would be unreasonable to expect all customers to be reasonable!

So, it's helpful to understand how customers develop their expectations so we can help them avoid these types of situations.

Customers generally develop their expectations from four primary sources:

  1. Our communication to the customer

  2. The customer's past experience with us

  3. Word-of-mouth from others (includes online reviews)

  4. Experience doing business with other companies

Let's go back to the wine example. Can you think of ways that any of these expectation sources might have influenced the customer to expect a free taste of wine?

Two jump out to me:

The first is number two, the customer's past experience. Many restaurants are perfectly willing to give you a free taste of wine before you order a glass. It's a way to allow customers to try a wine before they buy it. 

If the restaurant had done this with the author, it would make more sense for her to expect a free taste. 

The second expectation source that may have influenced the author is number four. Perhaps she had gotten free tastes before buying a glass of wine at other restaurants. Or, she may have recently dined at a restaurant that had pricing on the menu for two ounce pours. 

Again, her expectations would be more understandable if she had had one of those experiences.

 

Resources

Dealing with unreasonable customers is a big challenge for customer service professionals. Here are a couple of resources to help you navigate through these situations.

One is Adam Toporek's book, Be Your Customer's Hero. It was written to provide practical advice directly to frontline employees. Chapter 59 focuses on this issue direction, "Focus on what you can do, not what you can't."

There are also two training videos on Lynda.com. 

The first is How to Manage Customer Expectations for Frontline Employees. It focuses on effective communication techniques for situations like the one where the author demanded free wine.

The second is The Manager's Guide to Managing Customer Expectations. This video addresses the issue from a manager's perspective by providing tips for preventing situations where customer expectations go unmet.

You'll need a Lynda.com account to view the full videos, but you can get access with a 10-day trial.

How Popcorn Can Ruin a Good Training Video

A human resources manager recently contacted me to discuss some options for customer service training.

Her budget was limited and the small team of people she wanted to train worked in different locations. It would be logistically difficult and potentially cost prohibitive to get everyone together for an in-person class.

Naturally, I suggested video.

The HR manager told me that her organization had tried e-learning and video-based training in the past, but it wasn't well received. Participants thought it was boring.

I immediately recognized the popcorn problem. This issue causes learners to get bored with training and ultimately limits the new skills they implement on the job.

Here's an overview of the popcorn problem and what you can do to fix it.

The Popcorn Problem

Many people enjoy going to the movies.

Popcorn is a quintessential part of this experience. You get a bucket of popcorn to share with a friend, grab a favorite drink, and sit down to enjoy the movie. It's a relaxing form of entertainment. 

People often sit down and watch a training video the same way they'd watch a movie. This is not how people should try to learn valuable workplace skills, but they do.

It doesn't work out well.

The most obvious issue is it's boring. Even the most exciting training videos aren't great entertainment. You certainly wouldn't watch them just for fun.

(Side note: Here's where some readers will say, "But, I saw that video with John Cleese or the FISH! video and it was fun!" Ok, if you doubt me, then try inviting some friends over to watch a training video. Or, ask that special someone if they'd like to training video and chill this weekend. Good luck with that.)

The less obvious issue is employees learn very little by watching a video straight through. They implement even less back at work. The challenge is caused by something called The Forgetting Curve. 

People quickly forget what they learn in training unless they actively process it and apply it. This is necessary to move information from short to long-term memory, but this rarely happens when employees passively watch a training video.

That's not to say that training videos don't work. Blaming training videos for a lack of learning would be like blaming a hammer when you hit your finger and not the nail. There's nothing inherently wrong with the tool, but you'll get less-than-desirable results if you don't use the tool correctly.

The good news is there's an alternative approach to using training videos that's much more effective.

 

Bite Sized Learning

You can overcome the popcorn learning problem by breaking the training into bite-sized chunks with short assignments in between.

Here's an example using the Working With Upset Customers training video on Lynda.com.

The course is organized into short video segments that are each two to five minutes long. They're further organized into sections like "Introduction" and "Serving Angry Customers." This design makes it easy to dissect the course into small learning bites.

So, you might have your team watch the video this way:

  1. Watch the three Introduction videos

  2. Complete a Learning Plan and discuss with supervisor (there's a downloadable worksheet)

  3. Watch "Understanding Our Natural Instincts" video

  4. Go back to work and identify situations where you experience the Fight or Flight response

  5. Watch the next video, and so on.

The key is watching a short segment of the course, applying those skills on the job, and then returning to the course to continue learning.

Let's look at some of the advantages of using this approach:

  • Participants apply their new skills as part of the training.

  • Applying lessons helps make off-the-shelf training more relevant.

  • It's not boring!

That last one is key. The entire Working With Upset Customers course is 55 minutes long. There are no explosions, car chases, or sappy love scenes to spice things up. It's simply too long a video to enjoyably watch all in one sitting.

But, watching a five minute segment is a breeze. That's roughly equivalent to just three cat videos.

The Controversial Workplace Ban You Need to Consider

Look around you. Do you see your cell phone?

It's probably nearby. In a pocket, on your desk, in your bag, or even in your hand. Perhaps you're reading this blog post on your cell phone.

Now, let me ask you another question. Does your company have a cell phone policy?

Many do. These types of policies are common for customer-facing employees. For example, a study from Contact Center Pipeline found that 87 percent of contact centers have a workplace cell phone policy.

Most policies say that your phone can't interfere with your job duties. I've uncovered data that suggests the only way to do that is to ban cell phones completely.

Why Cell Phones Should Be Banned

A 2015 study from researchers Cary Stothart, Ainsley Mitchum, and Courtney Yehnert at Florida State University provide some compelling evidence for instituting a workplace cell phone ban.

The study, summarized nicely in this Harvard Business Review article, had participants complete a Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART). The subjects were seated at a computer and were asked to click on some items as they appeared on the screen while avoiding others. 

The participants' error rates were measured after one round of the activity to establish a baseline. They were then asked to complete a second round where subjecs were selected to be in one of three groups (unbeknownst to them):

  • Control Group

  • Group Receiving Text Messages

  • Group Receiving Phone Calls

The researchers sent participants in one group several text messages while they were completing the second SART. Another group received several phone calls during the second round. A third group didn't receive any texts or calls from the experimenters so it could act as the control.

The researchers found that just hearing a text or call notification from your cell phone can hurt work quality. Here are the error rate increases for each group from Round 1 to Round 2:

Some increase in error rate is expected. People have the attention span of a gnat these days. But, look at the difference between the control group and the groups distracted by their cell phones!

Amazingly, the study found that the phone notifications had a lingering effect. Participants made errors at the same rate after the notification as they did during the notification. That's because our mind wanders away from the task at hand and thinks about who might be calling or texting.

This data tells us the mere presence of a personal cell phone is a subliminal invitation to multitask. Not only is multitasking bad for customer service, sustained multitasking can ultimately lead to something called Directed Attention Fatigue which has symptoms identical to ADD.

So, it makes sense to ban cell phones in the workplace if you want to prevent service failures.

 

The Case Against Banning Cell Phones

Your employees are adults.

Banning their personal phones completely smacks of big-brotherism. It feels like an unwelcome intrusion and sends a message that you don't trust your employees to handle themselves.

Some might argue that these types of workplace policies lead to higher rates of employee burnout. While I didn't research that question in my recent burnout study, it's certainly a believable hypothesis.

It also opens the door for hypocrisy. Show me a manager who isn't walking around with his or her cell phone in hand! Letting the boss do one thing while employees do another isn't a great way to build morale.

And finally, there's the amazing story from Rackspace where employees used their personal cell phones to save the day when the phone system went down. You can read all about it by downloading the first chapter of my upcoming book.

 

Where Do You Come Out?

So, should you ban cell phones at work or not? Here's my preferred approach to the issue:

  1. Share the data with employees to make them aware.

  2. Discuss ways that distractions can hurt service.

  3. Let them decide what to do, but hold them accountable for results.

I always want to treat customer service employees with respect. This includes implementing as few policies as possible. 

Some employees can deliver outstanding service with a cell phone nearby. Others can't. I'd let them decide for themselves. What matters most is the quality of service they provide.

Why You Need a Customer Service Crisis Plan

On Monday, a power outage caused Delta Airlines to cancel 450 flights by 1:30pm ET. 

Thousands of passengers were stranded. Others couldn't start planned business trips or planned vacations. People struggled to get updated information.

This wasn't the first time flights were cancelled at Delta. It also won't be the last. Flight delays and cancellations are an unfortunate part of being in the airline business.

Stuff happens. That's why companies need to have a customer service crisis plan.

Unique Situation, Similar Results

Every company is at risk of something bad happening that involves customers.

Airlines face mass cancellations. Manufacturers face defective products. A hotel guest might decide to commit suicide by jumping off a balcony. A restaurant patron may have an allergic reaction to something in her meal.

These things happen. Even if they haven't happened to your business, they might.

Take Delta as an example. Their cancellations were easy to foresee, even if the specific cause wasn't. Two weeks ago, Southwest Airlines had to cancel 2,300 flights due to a computer system issue. The same thing happened to both Southwest and United in 2015.

Delta also faces weather-related cancellations on a regular basis. So, there is really no excuse for an airline like that to not have a plan.

The key is deciding what sort of crisis is your business likely to face. (More on that in a moment.)

 

Care For Your Key Stakeholders

Another angle to consider is the stakeholders who will be affected.

Sure, there's your customers. That's a pretty important group. How your company handles a crisis can define whether your customers make a vow to be customers for life or if they head straight to your competition.

Your employees are also affected.

Think about the Delta flight crews. They had little information (sometimes less than passengers) yet had to find a way to put a good face forward. 

One enterprising pilot bought pizza for passengers on his plane. Come to think of it, that may have been part of a plan. Or, at least there was past precedent in 2015.

There's also Delta's reservation agents, ticketing agents, gate agents, customer care representatives, and social media care representatives who all had to assist passengers whose travel was interrupted.

It's safe to assume many passengers in that bunch were less than pleasant.

There's also the media. Delta's outage has gotten widespread media coverage. When a disaster like this strikes, you want to be able to provide the media with helpful resources. It makes their job easier, but they're also more likely to go easier on you.

Like, sharing this video from Delta's CEO, Ed Bastian.

A crisis plan gives these key stakeholders some confidence. It lets people know what to do (or, what not to do). Most important, it gives people essential resources to serve those who need help.

 

Don't Over Complicate It!

Creating a crisis plan doesn't necessarily have to be complicated. Here are a few basic steps you can take:

Step 1: Identify a list of potential risks. You might not think of everything, but you'll have a good list. And, many items on your list can be applied to unforeseen developments.

Step 2: Assess the risk of each item. There's always someone on the team who insists on including "Zombie Apocalypse" on a list of potential risks. Fine. Let them have their fun. You'll just rank it as an extremely low risk.

Step 3: Create a plan to handle the top issues. Decide on your first few steps for each one. For example, there should be a clear process to follow if a customer or employee gets injured. (Side note: do you know what to do if someone gets hurt?!)

It remains to be seen whether Delta did a great job. Early indications are that passengers are naturally upset, but Delta handled it well. One thing that's obvious is they had a plan in place and they're acting on it.

**UPDATE 8/12/16**

Well, it looks like things got worse for Delta as the week went on. Here's a great blog post on the One Mile at a Time blog with a comprehensive (and quite fair) review of how Delta handled things.

Learn How to be a Great Customer Service Manager

There's a cool feature on Lynda.com that let's any user curate a playlist of training videos.

I've used it to create a playlist that's specifically geared for service leaders. My Customer Service Leadership playlist contains six courses that you can use to become a great customer service manager.

This post provides an overview of the training and tips on how to maximize your learning. Best of all, I'll show you how to access this training for free!

Playlist Overview

Here's a description of the six courses on the playlist, along with my rational for including them.

 

Managing a Customer Service Team, by Jeff Toister

Learn the basics of managing a customer service team. I included this course because it was designed to provide a thorough introduction to customer service management.

 

Coaching and Developing Employees, by Lisa Gates

Learn how to coach, transform, and empower employees and teams in ways that increase retention and improve the bottom line. This course will help you develop one of the most important skills a leader can have.

 

Getting Things Done, by David Allen

Learn the art of getting things done with world-renowned productivity expert David Allen. Managers are always pressed for time, but this course can really help. I've been using David Allen's principles myself since 2001 with great success.

 

Using Customer Surveys to Improve Service, by Jeff Toister

Learn how to design and implement customer service surveys, and turn the data into actions that can improve service quality. This will help you obtain essential data to make your team, and your organization, even stronger.

 

The Manager's Guide to Managing Expectations, by Jeff Toister

Learn to identify what a typical customer expects, where those expectations come from, and where your organization might be vulnerable. You can use this course to help prevent service failures from happening.

 

Quick Fixes for Poor Customer Service, by Jeff Toister

Discover simple solutions to instantly improve customer service. Things occasionally go wrong, but this course can help you quickly identify straightforward solutions.

 

Maximize Your Learning

Start by establishing a few learning goals for yourself. 

Think about the specific skills would you like to learn. Determine how will you apply this skills in your role as a leader. Most important, consider how these skills can help you improve you and your team's performance

Next, decide what content best matches your needs. If you're new to leadership, you might take the courses from start to finish. Or, if you are an experienced customer service manager, you might browse through the content to pick and choose topics that best fit your needs.

Finally, be prepared to practice new skills as you learn them. You don't have to watch the videos all the way through! They're designed to allow you to watch a short segment, try out what you learned, and then continue watching.

Perfecting the art of practice is a major way to improve the value of training.

 

Accessing the Playlist

You'll need a Lynda.com account to access the playlist.

Remember when I mentioned I'd show you how to take these courses for free? You can get a 10-day Lynda.com trial that will give you access to the entire library!

Once you're logged in, visit my Customer Service Leadership playlist and start learning!

What Happens When Customers Decide to Stick It Out

How loyal are your customers after a service failure?

It's question businesses might invest time in answering. In the meantime, I can share the results from a little experiment.

Last week, I included a link to an old blog post in my Customer Service Tip of the Week email. The post was a deliberate collection of broken links and misdirection that was intended to show the reader how it felt to experience a service failure.

What's interesting to me is the percentage of readers who stuck with the post after each failure. The data shows a trend that I believe will hold true if you analyze your real customer data.

If you want to read the blog post, I recommend doing that first. Otherwise, the analysis below will spoil the surprise. 

The post will open in a new window. You can come back here and continue once you've read it. (Assuming you don't bail!) Or, you can just skip the post altogether.

Here's An Interactive Guide to Stuff Your Customers Hate. 

Reader Statistics

The post was a funhouse of problems. Readers are told at the very beginning that I've written it to help them experience some of the issues that bother customers the most.

You’ll truly understand what aggravates your customers if you can make it through all the way to the end.

It had 124 unique readers from July 18 - July 24, 2016.

The first trick was readers were asked to click on a link to learn "A Secret Way to Diffuse Angry Customers." The link was deliberately broken, so readers who clicked saw an error message.

Only 67 unique readers clicked on this link. That's a 46 percent drop-off. Of course, I'm sure some people just skipped it, even though I tried to make it obvious.

There was another broken link. The set-up was exactly the same as the first one. (People really hate it when you don't fix a problem.) Here, just 53 people clicked through. 

That's a 57 percent drop-off. But, it's only a 21% drop-off from the number of unique readers who clicked the first broken link.

Now, I promise readers I've given them a real link. Let's see how many people click on this.

There were 61 unique readers, a 51 percent drop-off from the original post. But, the number strangely rose from the previous service failure. And, it's only a 9 percent drop-off from the original broken link.

This link didn't lead readers to the promised secret.

Instead, it displayed an annoying sales pitch for my book, Service Failure. (The point is that customers don't like to be sold to when you should be fixing their problem instead.) Readers had the option of buying my book or clicking on a link that said, "No thanks - take me to the secret."

That link had a total of 41 readers. These people presumably have faced three service failures: two broken links and an unwelcome sales pitch. Let's see some updated statistics:

  • 67% drop-off from the original 124 readers.

  • 39% drop-off from the original service failure (broken link).

  • 33% drop-off from the previous service failure (sales pitch).

In other words, readers stop reading after every service failure. But, the percentage of readers who stop reading progressively declines. Some people are clearly determined to stick it out.

There's just one more trick. 

Readers who skipped the annoying sales pitch shown in the previous link were taken to yet another annoying sales pitch. The page read, "Are you sure?" 

People could either relent and buy my book or click on another link that said, "I already said No! Just take me to the secret."

Guess how many people clicked on that final link? 41

That's the same number of unique readers who clicked on the previous link. There was a 0 percent drop-off after the last service failure.

 

What Does It All Mean?

Please, take all of this with a grain of salt.

My data shows that people either bail early at the first sign of trouble or become increasingly resilient. But, this is a small amount of data from a poorly controlled experiment. You could easily poke holes in my reasoning.

It does hint that maybe we have some customers who are very willing to be loyal. They'll tolerate a few problems. 

I'd suggest running some real numbers on your own customers. Find people who've experienced a service failure, or two, or more. Dig deeper to calculate their loyalty rate.

If that's true for your business that people are resilient after the first service failure, I'd want to find those people. I'd find a way to make them happy and reward them for their loyalty. 

My guess is those customers are probably worth a lot to your business.

The Department You Need to Check to Avoid Service Failures

In 2008, the shipping company DHL ran an ad campaign touting their outstanding customer service.

Each ad showed different service encounters where a DHL employee went above and beyond. The tagline was, "We're putting service back in the shipping business."

It wasn't true.

In November that year, DHL announced they were pulling out of the U.S. domestic shipping business. The company faced a myriad of problems, one of the biggest being their woeful customer service.

DHL's CEO, John Mullen, was quoted at the time as saying, "It's hard to see what could have been done that would have led to a different result."

But, there is something they should have done: audit their marketing and communications.

Why Conduct an Audit?

Your company's advertising is essentially a promise to customers. So, if you advertise something, you had better be able to deliver it. Customers naturally get disappointed when you promise them something and it doesn't happen.

Imagine a chain of furniture stores that promises same day delivery in their advertising. Fast delivery is the hook to get you in the door. But, what happens if there's a laundry list of exceptions to the same day promise?

A customer who expected same-day delivery when she ordered a couch won't be very happy to learn it will actually take two weeks.

It's scenarios like that that make it essential to conduct a regular marketing and communications audit. You'll avoid service failures if you spot (and fix) promises that aren't being kept.

 

How to Conduct Your Audit

Here's a three step process you can use to audit your marketing and communications.

Step 1: List all advertised promises. Check your advertising, brochures, and other collateral. Find out what your salespeople are pitching. Look at signage. Listen to your hold messages.

Step 2: Test each promise. Run a test on each promise to see if your company can actually deliver it. For instance, a bank is promoting their ATM machines as a faster and easier alternative than completing a teller-assisted transaction. You can test this promise by timing the same transaction via both channels.

Step 3: Make a list to fix. Identify broken promises that need to be fixed. Perhaps your advertising needs to be adjusted. Or, maybe your company needs to boost some capabilities to improve operations. The key is making sure what's promised is what gets delivered.

 

What to Audit

Here are a few specific things you should consider auditing.

Delivery

As I write this, I'm waiting to get my car back from the mechanic. I was told it would be two days, but I just called to check the status and learned it will now be three. 

Check on anything you deliver, whether it's a service, merchandise, or the time to complete a repair or service call.

That's why Netflix frequently sends it's DVD subscribers an email asking, "When did you mail this DVD?" or "When did you receive this DVD?" They're monitoring their delivery to make sure it stays within the promised range.

 

Response Time

Check out fast you respond to customers via various channels. 

For example, the new response time standard for email is one hour. If you can't respond in one hour, make sure you have an auto-responder set up to let customers know when you will respond. And then, time your responses to make sure you're fulfilling that promise.

KLM does this for their Twitter account, regularly posting their expected response time on their profile page.

Product Image

There's a great scene in the movie Falling Down where Michael Douglas's character, D-Fens, loses his mind because he's served a fast food hamburger that looks nothing like what's shown on the menu. 

Source: IMBD

Source: IMBD

It's an extreme example, but customers really don't appreciate it when the product doesn't match what's advertised.

Look at the product images you display on websites, brochures, menus, etc. and make sure they closely match what you're actually delivering. 

 

Resources

You can learn more about this and other techniques in a new training video, The Manager's Guide to Managing Customer Expectations on Lynda.com. 

Here's a short preview video.

You'll need a Lynda.com account to view the entire course, but I can hook you up with a 10-day trial.

PS. Check out this slightly different, but still excellent How-To article from Denise Lee Yohn on how to conduct a brand diagnostic to scale up your brand.

Book Review: Scaling Up Excellence

The authors call it "The Problem of More."

Organizations face a challenge when they identify a best practice and try to do more. Maybe one location in a retail chain is doing something terrific and executives want every location to do the same thing.

Replicating a best practice or an innovative solution throughout a company seems like it should be so easy, but it isn't.

That's the issue tackled in Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less by Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao.

 

Overview

The lessons in this book can be applied to a wide range of challenges.

They describe how a failing hospital re-energized it's staff and turned it's fortunes around. Or, how companies like JetBlue or Disney create and sustain their famous customer-focused cultures.

The book immediately resonated with me in two ways. 

First, it's written as a how-to guide, but there are plenty of interesting real-life stories to spice it up. Second, much of what the book discusses is fundamentally organizational culture.

I read it as research for a book that I'm writing, The Service Culture Handbook, but I found it to be very enjoyable on its own.

The book starts by outlining a general philosophy for scaling excellence. It then describes five core principles and provides some general advice for implementing the ideas in your own organization.

 

Take-Aways

There were quite a few take-aways in this book. Here are my top three:

Think Big + Small. Yes, you need to have a smart program to scale a best practice across an organization, but you also need subtle nudges to get things moving. For example, leaders need to consistently insist on modeling best practices.

Bad Apples Ruin It. Sutton and Rao suggest that people who actively work against an initiative have a far more damaging effect than people who actively support it. You see this time and time again in organizations where individual leaders undermine a program by insisting on doing their own thing. 

You Must Have Excellence. The book contains a quote that's both a blinding flash of the obvious, and an explanation for why so many corporate initiatives fail:

To spread excellence, you need to have some excellence to spread.

 

Buy This Book

The book is available in a variety of formats on Amazon. You can also check out more of my recommended reading list.

 

Why You Need to Partner Up with Angry Customers

UPDATED: October 10, 2023

It was the yelling that caught everyone's attention.

Well, that and the guy emphatically slamming his hand on the hotel's registration desk. A line of people waiting to check in stared at the scene, transfixed by this irate guest.

The problem was clear. He thought he had a reservation. The hotel said he didn't. Plus, the hotel was sold out so they couldn't accommodate him.

The front desk agent was unsympathetic. It’s hard to care deeply about someone’s problems when they’re yelling at you and making a scene. She just wanted the guest to go away.

A supervisor stepped in and immediately made two mistakes. 

First, he gave in to his own embarrassment. The supervisor turned to the long line of weary travelers waiting to check in and said , "I'm sorry for the delay, folks, but you know, some people...." He tilted his head towards the irate guest just in case nobody knew who he was talking about.

Mistake number two was to face the guest directly, hold up the palm of his hand like a stop sign, and loudly say, "Sir, I'm going to need you to calm down!"

All hell broke loose. Someone called security.

Customers are not opponents

The hotel supervisor treated the irate guest as an adversary.

Objectively, we know we aren't supposed to do this. Customer service professionals are there to help, right? It gets a little more complicated when the situation is real.

Angry customers can trigger our fight or flight instinct. Upset customers are harder to help because they tend to get more judgmental and less open to ideas. Some customers are just jerks.

Unfortunately, treating a customer like an opponent tends to make things worse. Now, they have two problems. There's the initial issue plus the maddening feeling of being stonewalled.

Consider this infamous Comcast cancellation call. Nobody really cared that the customer wanted to cancel his service. It was the Comcast agent's unwillingness to facilitate the cancellation request that caught everyone's attention.

Customer service reps stonewall upset customers all the time. Perhaps not at an extreme level, but they still do little things that make matters worse:

  • Robotically quoting policy

  • Using trigger words like "No" or "Policy" to defend a decision

  • Trying to argue with a customer or prove them wrong

  • Failing to demonstrate empathy

  • Using defensive body language

 

The Partner Technique

You'll have better luck serving angry customers if you make them feel like you're on their side by using the Partner Technique. Here are some examples of using partner behaviors:

  • Shift your body language so you're both facing the problem together

  • Listen carefully to customers so they feel heard

  • Use collaborative words like "We" and "Let's"

I discovered the Partner Technique while working with an airline client's ticketing agents. They'd often encounter travelers who were upset about baggage fees or long check-in lines.

Here's how the ticketing agents used the Partner Technique to make their passengers feel better:

First, they'd physically move to the passenger's side. This allowed them to look at the issue together, but it also avoided more defensive face-to-face body language.

Second, they'd ask questions and listen carefully to the passenger's concerns. 

Finally, the ticketing agent gave the passenger their commitment to assist them. This didn't always mean giving the passenger exactly what they wanted, but it did mean making an effort to demonstrate empathy and provide assistance.

This change in perspective helped more passengers feel better and made the ticketing agents' jobs a little easier.

One final note: 

Being on the customer's side doesn't necessarily mean you aren't on your company's side. It just means that you are making an effort to understand your customer and help them succeed.

Case Study: The Partner Technique in Action

How would the hotel situation have unfolded if the supervisor (or even the front desk agent) had used the Partner Technique?

Here’s a nearly identical example where the supervisor did use the technique.

Two guests attempted to check in to a hotel. The associate couldn’t locate their reservation, despite the guests insisting that they had one. They became rude and verbally abusive, even as the associate calmly tried to find a solution.

A supervisor stepped in.

She used open body language and partnering words to show she was on the guests’ side and genuinely wanted to help. The supervisor asked if the guests would give her a few moments so she could research the issue and find their reservation.

The guests were still upset, but they began to calm.

The supervisor returned with an update. She had located the guests’ reservation, but it was at another property managed by the same chain. It was the guests’ error that caused the whole scene!

Continuing to use the Partner Technique, the supervisor offered to have the hotel shuttle drive the guests to the other hotel. It was a 20 minute drive, but the hotel would transport them at no cost. The other option was to transfer their reservation to the supervisor’s hotel. The supervisor offered a discount, though the rate would still be significantly higher than the other hotel since it was a waterfront resort (the other hotel was in a suburban office park).

The guests accepted the supervisor’s transportation offer.

They weren’t happy. They didn’t apologize. They didn’t even own up to their mistake. But the supervisor’s efforts to partner with the guests prevented an escalated or prolonged argument and helped the guests get to an acceptable solution.

That was still a good outcome since all of this happened in a public space in front of other hotel guests. As one of those guests, I can tell you we were all grateful for the way the supervisor handled the situation with grace.

Take Action

Think about situations where you were tempted to argue with a customer. Consider how The Partner Technique might help you avoid that argument.

This short video contains more suggestions for sidestepping arguments with angry customers.