Customer Service Course

Handling Difficult Customers Training

Introduction:
This one-day workshop will equip participants with the skills to understand difficult customer behaviours and deal with them effectively. They will appreciate the reasons that drive customer behaviours and develop an issue focused mindset to deal with difficult situations.

The workshop will be conducted in a highly-interactive and participative environment that uses real-life case stories, examples and scenarios to get participants to think and apply different strategies to handle difficult customers. Role plays will be conducted to re-inforce key learning points.

Duration: 1 Day

Target Audience:
Customer service / customer support managers and executives, service agents, front-line service staff as well as staff in back-up and support roles from both the manufacturing and service (including banking and finance, logistics, healthcare, government and public service) sectors

Programme Objectives:
Upon completion of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Examine what causes people to be difficult and assess if customers are difficult for a reason
• Analyse their own state and determine the approach towards dealing with difficult customers
• Identify different difficult customer behaviours
• Apply empathetic listening and questioning to resolve issues
• Demonstrate effective strategies for dealing with each type of difficult customers (apply defusing techniques)

Programme Outline:

1. Customer Response and Behaviour Patterns
Identify the various reasons which lead to angry and dissatisfied customers. Also, understand that a dissatisfied customer may not necessarily be angry and vice-versa. Learn to interpret human behaviour effectively so as to deal with difficult situations.

2. Managing Your Own Emotional State
The power of being able to professionally handle any type of difficult customer under any circumstance often just requires a magical moment to portray calmness with a professional “First Impression”. Acquire the ability to possess a positive mindset and to demonstrate verbal and non-verbal communication to near perfection. Learn a simple technique to keep calm.

3. Types of Difficult Customers
Difficult customers need not necessarily be customers that are angry or dissatisfied. It can include customers that may be happy but are just either too long-winded or ask a lot of irrelevant questions which can affect you or other customers waiting in-line.
Types of difficult customers can be “angry”, “talkative”, “demanding”, “indecisive”, “know-it-alls” and “hostile/aggressive”. These are not all rude and/or angry customers, but they do cause difficulties when trying to meet their needs and expectations.

4. Empathetic Listening and Questioning
The proven method of calming an upset customer is just by listening and showing empathy. Once the customer is calmer, the questioning skill becomes essential to zoom down to the real issue. Solutions will be effective when the real issues are addressed.

5. Defusing Techniques for Dealing with Difficult Customers
Learn to use various strategies to deal with different difficult customer behaviours. The strategies include the “Collaborative Approach”, “Rules for Defusing” and the “C.A.R.P Approach”. Apply consequential thinking to a response and its impact on customers, organisation, colleagues and development.

Contact Us 

Contact us now and our friendly customer service consultants will be in touch with you to design the best training and consulting solution that is tailored to your requirements.

Related Page:

Customer Service Training – Emotional Intelligence for Customer Service Training
Conflict Management Training – Managing Challenging Behaviours Training

You may be interested to explore our  Soft Skills Training programmes or the full range of  Training Courses.