Angry customers

 An angry customer is one of the most difficult things to deal with in customer service. It’s hard to help someone who’s complaining, venting, or even cursing at you. It’s even harder to want to help them. What’s more, these exchanges are difficult to shake, making it tough to help the next person, who may be perfectly nice.

So, how do you deal with irate customers in a way that lets you give them the help they need without feeling wounded in the process?

How to deal with angry customers: 10 steps

Your instinct might be to yell back, be sarcastic, disengage, hang up, or close the ticket. But, in most cases, you can’t really do that without consequence. Here’s what you should do to grow stronger customer relationships instead.

• Give them the floor (at first)
• Acknowledge your customer’s emotions
• Restate what they told you
• Move to an appropriate channel
• Think critically
• Set clear next steps
• Stay consistent
• Explore solutions
• Ask for help
• Hang up as a last resort

1. Give them the floor (at first)

They’re angry. They have something to say. So the first thing you should always do, no matter if you already know about the situation, is give them the floor. Take opportunities to verbalize that you’re listening (using words like “I see” or “okay,” for example) but don’t interrupt. It’s your customer’s time to express what they’re feeling and experiencing. It’s your job to listen.

That is unless you’re the second or third touchpoint for this customer. While this tactic is great for initial interactions, it can actually make a customer angrier to rehash their experience over and over again. Even worse, the more your customer repeats their story, the more it sinks into their head and becomes their source of truth. When a story becomes true, it’s more difficult to reframe and reach a solution when it’s time to problem solve.

2. Acknowledge your customer’s emotions

Instead of jumping straight into problem-solving, spend a moment validating what your customer feels. Try something as simple as stating that you understand the pain they’re experiencing. You can also apologize or say, “You’re right” if your company dropped the ball.

Use this opportunity to play to your customer’s human side. If your team made a mistake, give them context. Let them know the cause—whether that’s unanticipated sick leave or pandemic pressures—that contributed to their pain. That context helps your customer understand that everyone, even the customer service rep they’re yelling at, is just trying to do their best.

Whatever you say, make sure it’s a genuine and specific acknowledgment of where the failure occurred. Most customers can tell when you’re faking, and doing so only makes them angrier.

3. Restate what they told you

Restating what they said shows that you’re listening and taking them seriously. You can also use this tactic to make sure you understand their situation and what they want from you.

Choose your words carefully when you restate the situation back to your customer. You can use the customer’s words to signal that you’re not minimizing their pain. However, also look for opportunities to tweak the language to something less loaded, more tangible, and more along the lines of a problem you can solve.

After restating what your customer said, ask them to confirm that you got it right. A simple agreement there goes a long way to deescalating the tension and putting you both into more of an “ally” space.

4. Move to an appropriate channel

It might make sense to move a social media or text conversation to phone if it’s particularly heated. Likewise, you may need to switch to a video call so you can screenshare as you troubleshoot their issue. Don’t be afraid to embrace omnichannel and move the conversation to a different medium so you can better help your angry customer.

We prefer to bring upset customers into a video call as it makes it easier to connect, analyze body language, empathize, and have a more human conversation. “Jumping on a Zoom call signals that I’m taking this seriously. But it also works in my favor.

We use Slack to quickly follow up with customers—particularly our B2B customers. WhatsApp is our go-to for global customers.

5. Think critically about what your customer really wants

Do they want a refund, or are they just looking for someone to validate their experience? Remember, the reason your customer is angry can change throughout their interaction with you and your team. Before addressing your customer’s request, you need to understand what’s behind it.

You may need to go above and beyond your usual problem solving to help your customer out, and that’s okay. “It’s not a bad thing to give your customer homework because most problems aren’t solely on us,” said Ana. “They can execute and see better results. And maybe they’ll remember when you recommended they do that and think of you fondly.”

6. Set clear next steps (and follow through on them)

Often enough, you won’t be able to solve your angry customer’s problem right away. When that happens, it becomes even more critical to communicate exactly how your team will fix their issue and what to expect.

We walk our customers through a roadmap of how we plan to resolve their problem. This roadmap includes what we’ll do for them right away, what comes after that, and when the customer can expect a resolution. For example, if we can’t troubleshoot a product issue with a customer immediately, we’ll schedule a next-day appointment with a product manager on that call. Then we’ll tell the customer to expect a follow-up email from the customer support team 24 hours after the appointment to make sure all is well.

Set customer expectations by telling them specific next steps. If your customer knows when you’ll follow up or when their problem will be resolved, they won’t need to call every hour for an update. Communicating clear next steps prevents the situation from becoming more heated and putting more pressure on your team. By following through as promised, you can de-escalate your customer’s anger.

7. Stay consistent

Inconsistent customer service interactions can confuse and escalate angry customers. It’s critical for everyone on your team to be on the same page about what’s happening and what the solution is.

Share customer data, history, and context to stay consistent. Everyone who interacts with a customer needs to know what the customer wants, what their history is, their plan, their pain, what’s been done so far to resolve it, and the recommended solution. Consistency keeps the customer from rehashing the details too many times, often causing them to become more irritated. Zendesk, for example, helps service reps and managers keep track of everything they need to know about a customer in one place.

Consistency also deters agent shopping. When a customer hears different things from different people, they may insist on speaking to someone else until they get what they want. Agent shopping wastes your team’s time and encourages your customer to return to this bad behavior in future customer service interactions. You can discourage this by making sure everyone on your team offers the same solutions.

8. Explore solutions even if you know they’re not available

Say your customer comes to you demanding a refund, and you know a refund isn’t an option. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go to your manager and ask for it anyway. Doing so demonstrates to your customer that you’re putting in the effort to do everything in your power to help them. “Showing that you’re willing to work for them, not take the easy way out, goes a long way even if it results in the same outcome,” .

Showing that you’re willing to work for them, not take the easy way out, goes a long way even if it results in the same outcome.

9. Ask for help from your team

Don’t be afraid to ask for help in uncomfortable situations, like when a customer is using abusive, sexist, or otherwise inappropriate language. If you’re unsure whether you need to terminate a customer interaction, ask a manager to come in and do a subjective review. They can analyze the situation and determine the best next steps for you and the customer.

Teammates and managers can also provide solutions for customer issues you’re unsure of how to solve. Reach out to your product or engineering team for more technical questions or ask fellow customer service reps how they approached a similar issue. A manager can also do more investigating and open closed doors for your customer in some cases.

10. Hang up as a last resort

Yes, it’s an option. But if you go this route, be sure to involve a manager beforehand. Involving a manager gives them a chance to help you think through creative solutions and exhaust all options. It also provides them with the visibility they need to know that you did everything you could in that situation.

Ready to hang up on an upset customer? Revenue might stay your hand. You and your manager are more likely to fight harder for a repeat, loyal customer on a pricier plan than someone who just purchased your product for the first time with a 70 percent off code.

However, customer revenue is only part of the picture. You might consider firing a customer who repeatedly contacts your team to the point of harassment. Long-term customer issues can take up hundreds of hours and cost teams more than the customer’s worth.

What makes an angry customer angry?

So what drives a customer to get angry in the first place? Knowing what contributes to customer anger and frustration can often help you solve their problem and help get them (and keep you) in a better mood.

1. Product problems

Customers are usually pretty up-front with their feelings in these situations. There’s a gap between their expectations of your product, and the reality they’re encountering. Your customer might feel shame for not being able to get things to work—no one likes feeling incompetent, and asking for help can be challenging and stressful to people who are used to being self-sufficient.

Why?

• Your product is more challenging to set up and/or use than they anticipated
• Your product doesn’t do what they thought it would
• Your product isn’t making life as easy as they think it should
• Your product has stopped working, partially or completely
• They’ve tried to figure it out already, without success

Alternately, they might feel lied to or betrayed by your company, or even the product itself. If they have reasonable expectations that aren’t being met, you can apologize and work to find a solution. If their expectations are incorrect, whether because they assumed, missed, or misinterpreted some information, or if they were given inaccurate information, it’s important to reset their expectations and to see if there’s a way to prevent others from having the same experience.

2. Support woes

It happens. Customers get frustrated with customer support. They may be upset over an escalation, or simply because they don’t trust that you’ll be willing or able to help them. It may be that they’ve had bad customer service experiences with your organization before, but they may have just been burned often enough in the past that they no longer trust that any company cares about their needs.

Why?

• They’ve been waiting longer than anticipated for a response
• They think they won’t like your answer
• They’ve been passed around from agent to agent without concrete results
• They have other unresolved issues with you
• They had one or more bad previous support experiences—with your team or other companies
• They have an incorrect expectation of the level of support they are entitled to

And what’s even more challenging? The customer may have had a phenomenal service experience with a different company, perhaps not even in your industry, and they now expect that same level of support from you.

Similar to product-related issues, there may be an expectations gap that needs to be bridged. A customer might be feeling abandoned, powerless, or victimized. There’s often a great opportunity in these situations to show that you really do care. The commitment you bring to solving their issue not only can help rebuild trust in your organization, but in their faith in customer service. And who knows, you might set the gold standard for expectation transfer.