Handling Challenging Customers

Challenge yourself to handle challenging customers better

When you know the customer is not the King and yet are entrusted to manage challenging customers better

In the life of a sales professional (or even other departmental personnel) getting challenging customers is inevitable. But not knowing how to manage the situation and come out of it with dignity, grace and a repaired relationship is not acceptable.

Research indicates that a challenging customer characteristic includes someone who complain but are likely to continue doing business with your company if they feel that they were treated properly. So, angry, complaining customers care enough to talk to you, and have not yet decided to take their business to the competition. They are customers worth saving.

If your job was easy, anyone could do it! You’re constantly facing challenges in fact, that’s your JOB! It is easy to work with people you like, and it is even easier to work with people who like you. But that’s not always the case. Sooner or later, you’ll have to deal with a difficult customer. There are some sound business reasons to become adept in handling an angry customer.

In businesses, especially where the product or service is niche/ luxury or the buying cycle long or even if the business is one of mass retail, Handling Challenging Customers with great care and finesse. Handling customers professionally is often an acquired skill – one that takes both conceptual understanding and applied practice to master.

On the face of it managing challenging customer situations is an extension of common sense instructions – it begins with actively listen and do not argue, build rapport with empathy, never take it personally and know when to give in etc. – however for the sales professionals who want to deep dive into communication scenarios, understand how to use Customer relationship management tools to pre-empt and understand the larger picture of handling challenging customers, then Bodhih workshop on handling challenging customers is a powerful option.

What are the challenging customer characteristics?

A challenging customer definition is about various customers who are all unique in their context and complexity. Broadly speaking we by experience we should easily relate to five or six stereotypes.

• The Bully or the aggressor – Someone who is emotionally charged at the situation and is not interested to listen to anyone by ways of an explanation or solution.
• The Impatient – Someone who is not ready to wait for the process or practice to complete and wants a special dispensation at someone else’s expense.
• The silent and vague – Someone that is not sure of their selection or choices and lays responsibility of it on the sales or service staff.
• The cribber – Someone who is nit-picky on multiple aspects of a product or a service and continually reporting some dissatisfaction or the other

• The know-it-all: Someone who is an expert on most things and seems to be on a forever hunting–searching mode for the ‘perfect’ one.

• Bodhih’s workshop on Handling Challenging Customers professionally kick starts with a facilitator-led presentation, and group discussion where seven communication breakdown scenarios are shared. Participants comprehend the essentials of effective communication, probing techniques, and the importance of language in communication with active listening, eliciting feedback and demonstrating emotional intelligence at the moment.

  Thereafter to step learners through the value chain – from customer service to customer delight by leveraging the CRM techniques, the Bodhih facilitator through a video presentation, and group discussion enables participants to grasp the transformation cycles with real-life illustrations.

What is the bigger picture of Handling Challenging Customers professionally?

At a department, group or an organizational level, handling challenging customers’ needs to be understood from a strategic point of view. Challenging customers are vital sources of feedback that should not be wasted. So appropriate incident-detail management systems are needed to capture, pursue and harvest learnings from this kind of CRM data. Participants are introduced to the concept and finer aspects are used for class discussions.

Bodhih facilitators are seasoned professionals who create linkages between skills picked up in the workshops and then to apply them in participant’s current roles. This is done through specific illustrations and analogies and is true for the next session at the handling challenging customers program – complaint handling.

This session on client management approaches includes objection handling, problem types Vs problem resolution, Root cause analysis, cause and effects of firefighting. Learners, through a combination of instructional aids – videos, presentations etc.- are coached on the aspects of demonstrating an adaptive mindset and adopting a dynamic approach to problem solving.

At Bodhih, handling challenging customers professionally is a popular session that is part of a larger sales skills training suite .

The session draws richly from research done on handling irate customers and also published literature on social psychology.

The heart of the handling challenging customers professionally program lies in the powerful session that dissects the topic of handling challenging customers namely, demonstrating leadership in challenging scenarios.

Learners work through multiple dimensions of leadership – like taking initiative, ensuring effective delegation, pushing back politely on unreasonable demands, building internal and external confidence and converting challenging scenarios into case studies for transformation or turnaround stories by leveraging the power of feedback.

How would you gain from ‘handling challenging customers professionally’ workshop at Bodhih?

Bodhih customizes its ‘handling challenging customers’ workshop along the ADDIE model. Workshop experiences are analysed, designed, developed and delivered that are solution focused and include a range of blended training pedagogy such as role plays, group exercises, self-assessment tools, management games, individual activities, videos, case studies, facilitation, discussions and more.

In addition to the ADDIE model, the handling customers professionally session takes advantage of the experiential adult-learning process of concrete experience – reflective observation – abstract conceptualization – active experimentation.

The edge in Bodhih’s Handling challenging customers program comes from researched industry learnings, current best practices and academic insights. The workshop takeaways ensure that learnings are grasped and applied at all levels within a company and its individuals. The long-term benefits are to institutionalise techniques of handling challenging customers professionally better by embedding active listening skills, effective probing techniques and implementing an organization-wide strategic system to capture and data mine the challenging customer incident stream.

What is Bodhih’s promise on Handling challenging customers workshops?

Managers across industries and functions and executive level participants who have attended Bodhih’s sessions on Handling challenging customers professionally talk of the changed individual and team behaviours, namely, demonstrating emotional intelligence skills by taking charge of emotions and attitudes, understanding customer behaviour patterns, gaining cooperation from challenging customers, and finally creating a win-win situation for both customers and service providers.

Frequently asked questions