5 Telephone Etiquette Tips to Help You Deal with Angry Customers

In order to pre­pare your­self and your team for the bar­rage of cus­tomer calls that will come with many heavy shop­ping sea­sons of the year (Valentine’s Day, Black Fri­day, Cyber Mon­day, post-holidays, and so much more).… with every­thing from cus­tomers inquir­ing about your return and exchange poli­cies, to ques­tions about how to install the new prod­uct that they received for Christ­mas. With so many calls it’s nat­ural to expect that you will hear from a num­ber of impa­tient, frus­trated, or just flat-out angry cus­tomers.

What’s the best way to deal with angry cus­tomers? Are there sure-fire responses that will dif­fuse the sit­u­a­tion? We all know that if your cus­tomer reps use scripts, they will sound robotic and, well, “scripted,” but when tough sce­nar­ios arise, it does help to have guided responses for your reps. Below are five help­ful tele­phone eti­quette tips to steer poten­tially neg­a­tive con­ver­sa­tions into more pos­i­tive con­ver­sa­tions, with­out sound­ing scripted.

Tele­phone eti­quette tip #1: Avoid “I don’t know”

It’s com­mon for cus­tomers to ask ques­tions that the rep doesn’t have an answer for, but instead of say­ing “I don’t know,” guide your reps to frame the response pos­i­tively. A great alter­na­tive response would be:

“That’s a great ques­tion. I’ll find out for you.”

Instead of frus­trat­ing the cus­tomer and pre­sent­ing a dead-end sit­u­a­tion, the rep instead turns the sit­u­a­tion into an opportunity.

Train your reps to avoid “I don’t know” when­ever pos­si­ble; teach them to reframe the unknowns into a way to offer addi­tional help.

Tele­phone eti­quette tip #2: Be care­ful how you trans­fer customers

One of the most dreaded phrases for many cus­tomers is “Let me trans­fer you.” How many times have you been trans­ferred, only to start over on an auto­matic sys­tem, or to have the call dropped? While you may not be able to avoid hav­ing to trans­fer cus­tomers to a dif­fer­ent depart­ment, you can ease cus­tomers’ wor­ries by how you explain the move.

Instead of say­ing: “Please hold while I trans­fer you,” instead try:

“Let’s get this prob­lem solved for you as quickly as pos­si­ble. Angela is our spe­cial­ist in the tech depart­ment, and she’s going to help you out.”

By rephras­ing how you state a trans­fer, you’ll ease a customer’s fears of get­ting dropped and focus on the pos­i­tive – that you’re putting them on the line with some­one who spe­cial­izes in the topic.

Tele­phone eti­quette tip #3: Make the best of a defec­tive product

If a cus­tomer calls to com­plain about a defec­tive prod­uct, assume that you are already deal­ing with a frus­trated cus­tomer who doesn’t think very highly about your prod­ucts. Make lemon­ade out of lemons, as they say, with the fol­low­ing tele­phone eti­quette steps:

Be empa­thetic: The first step is to show empa­thy. Com­mu­ni­cate that you under­stand the prob­lem is frus­trat­ing and that the cus­tomer is upset.

Offer some sort of expla­na­tion: Next, let the cus­tomer know that there is a rea­son behind the defect – this isn’t mak­ing excuses – it’s empha­siz­ing that not all of your prod­ucts are defec­tive, and that they should expect a high-quality replacement.

Rem­edy the prob­lem: Finally, offer a rem­edy. Tell the cus­tomer you will ship out a replace­ment right away or offer a refund.

Dam­aged or defec­tive prod­ucts are inevitable, but los­ing an angry cus­tomer because of it is not. How you han­dle the sit­u­a­tion can make all the difference.

Tele­phone eti­quette tip #4: When you can’t bend the rules, offer a win­ning alternative

There are cer­tain rules that you can’t break for a cus­tomer, but instead of leav­ing the cus­tomer frus­trated and dis­ap­pointed, offer an alter­na­tive so that the cus­tomer still feels like he is still get­ting what he wants. For exam­ple, if a cus­tomer is try­ing to get a dis­count on a sale that has already expired, instead of telling the customer:

“I’m sorry, the sale is over, and we are no longer offer­ing that discount.”

Try this:

“Gosh, really unfor­tu­nate tim­ing. The sale ends on Jan­u­ary 3^rd, but if you don’t mind wait­ing until March, we’ll be offer­ing our anniver­sary sale, and you can get the item for 20% off. Would you be will­ing to wait until then?”

In this sce­nario, you’re not break­ing rules for your com­pany, and you’re not telling the cus­tomer an out­right no, either – you’re offer­ing an alter­na­tive sit­u­a­tion that still gives the cus­tomer the option he’s after.

Tele­phone eti­quette tip #5: Don’t let the cus­tomer hang up until you know he or she is satisfied

Finally, how you close the call is extremely impor­tant. Before you let the cus­tomer hang up, take the small step of ask­ing if there is any­thing else that you can assist with. Here is a fan­tas­tic way to wrap up a call:

“Thanks again for tak­ing the time to call today. Is there any­thing else I can help with? I’d be happy to assist with any­thing else you need.”

A clos­ing line such as this shows your appre­ci­a­tion for the cus­tomer, makes sure the cus­tomer is sat­is­fied, and it com­mu­ni­cates your will­ing­ness to keep help­ing, if need be. This type of closer is espe­cially effec­tive if you’ve had an angry cus­tomer – it ends the con­ver­sa­tion on a pos­i­tive note.

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Improve how your team works with angry cus­tomers by offer­ing the right kind of cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing. Fol­low tips, like the above, that encour­ages the use of guided responses so that your cus­tomer reps have a tool­box of options to choose from. Your reps won’t sound scripted, and they’ll leave the cus­tomer with a pos­i­tive impression.