Dealing with difficult people

Dealing with easygoing people is easy but dealing with difficult people is difficult.

We have read that it is unofficial policy at large call centres to simply hang up on a difficult customer.

Why?

It must be very hard to try and explain to someone how to make their appliance work when you can’t see them or the appliance. It would be virtually impossible if they are screaming down the phone at you.

And so that’s it – just hang up and hope when they ring back, they don’t get through to you.

However, the truth is more subtle than that – so subtle that it is almost a secret.

Very few people seem to know, understand or accept this secret.

And it’s this

“Staff will treat customers no better than they are treated themselves”

Why should they? What part of a person is built to believe

“That’s OK, I get treated like a servant, but I must be nice to the customer, after all, they pay my wages”

The truth is something like a stepping stone effect.

However well you treat staff, raises the level of customer service because staff feel increased pride in the job and pass this on almost subconsciously.

If you subscribe to our weekly update, we touch on this in point 1 of our report “The 5 mistakes most employers make”

If you haven’t subscribed, you can do so here.

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When sales gets in the way of the day job

We have just been to a branch of a large financial institution to carry out some business.

The first thing that slightly alarmed us was personal callers to the enquiry desk being put through on the phone to a “back office”. This was odd because there were quite a lot of staff who seemed to be “walking about”

We had rather a long time to think about this because there was quite a long queue for the counter.

As it turns out, the reason for this delay was that the cashiers were asking every customer a sales question and getting into a discussion.

“Do you have a mortgage ?”
“Have you made a will ?”

All designed to engage the customer - nothing wrong with that but at the expense of other customers ?

Training is like this - to be successful, training managers must focus on what matters and training needs must be just that - not training

wants

[tags] sales, customer service, training needs, [/tags]

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Why this price match scheme isn’t worth the VIP card it is printed on

One of us has just been to the travel agents to buy some foreign currency.

The conversation went something like this;
“What rate do you have for (foreign currency) please, I want £100 cash worth ?”

“That’s 2.20 today - have you been quoted any other rates ?”

“No - I just called in off the street”

“Right, well we have a rate match scheme - if you are quoted a cheaper rate, we will match it”

(Thinks) - That’s very good but if I am quoted a cheaper rate somewhere else - why would I come back here to get THE SAME rate ?

[tags] foreign currency, travel agents, holidays, management, customer service [/tags]

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