Calming Irate Customer Interactions: 5 Proven Techniques

00:00Hi, guys. Tom Laird here. You've heard me break down contact center technology on the podcast time

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00:30Welcome back everybody to another episode of advice from a call center geek, the call center and contact center podcast, when we try to give you some actionable items, take tech center, improve the overall quality, improve the agent experience, hopefully we can improve. Your customer experience-as well. My name is Tom Laird. I am the CEO of Expivia Interaction Marketing. We. We are about a 500, 600 seat contact center outsourcer located here in the U S of a also the CEO and founder of auto QA where we're autom, automating, contact center, quality, assurance, scoring, using AI. I think this is episode 226, which is pretty awesome started way back in 2018. Quick ask for anybody again, love for you to follow the podcast, but if there's any reviews, especially if you're, if you're listening on Spotify or Google or especially on iTunes, we haven't had any reviews for a little bit.

01:22So love that if you guys have

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01:43I think in a weird way talk about. what we need to do to kind of survive, the kind of dealing with an consulting, consulting and in your contact center to train with your agents. These are my five favorite, you know, we, we always talk to kind of frontline supervisors on, on kind of getting some of their ideas. So these five are kind of, I think three of them have come from supervisors actually in in our team. In a team that I've kind of always kind of brought up with the first one and kind of the last one. But I think, you know, these are things that we talk with our agents through, these are kind of some of the tools we're giving our agents, right, so that they can deal with, you know, somebody who's maybe not being a jerk, right, but just is not happy, and is maybe taking it out on the agent, right?

03:15The first thing, and I think everybody kind of knows this, you know, you know, you know, you know, customer is not mad at You, right? If you're the agent, You have to have this kind of Teflon shield that understands. They're mad about the sit, right? And so your job is to try to help them through that. And I think the cool thing about,

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03:54I see it all the time here at Expivia. We have just some people that have been here so-long. They do such a good job with it. And that's almost worth more than kind of So let's get into some of these. There are a not like one is I will anybody who comments that has something worthwhile. You know, We'd love to talk with you and again, I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm a I'm I'm I'm I'm and way to tick off customers with fake empathy, right? That's the tool that can be the best or the worst. We call it false hustle, right? I'm really sorry to hear that, Mrs. Smith. That, that kind of thing I think where you're just kind of going through the motions.. That can almost make a customer a little bit more rate that that scripted empathy, right?

05:32So we want to do things of not just show empathy, How are we going to look to fix the I wrote down a bunch of examples here, too. So if you seem, kind of, reading or looking off, that's kind of what I'm doing. Because, I want to I as actionable, as possible. So, again, taking that empathy, that you are, oh, my gosh, I can't believe this happened to you. But then, hey, this is what we're going to do now. That does a really good job of, kind of, de-escalating. Because you're not just kind of saying you're giving kind of an option to the customer to say, Hey, listen, if you kind of roll with me here, we're going to get through this and and I'm going to be able to help you. So again, expressing empathy for the customer situation. Immediately following up with an action.

06:23So again, like if the customer says, you know, hey, no, I've been overcharged for the last three months. Nobody seems to care. And then. you know, But we still a don't do that, right? We've scripted our agents to do so many dumb things that we've kind of taken away some of the humanness of this and trying to get the humanness, the customer experience. Again, so that bridge empathy, I love it. It's one of the best ways, right? Making sure you're going to write into how you're going to help the customer after you you, kind of, give a legitimate and a human empathetic statement that actually correlates. And if you're using the same empathetic statement for every single one, that's not human, that's a robot. So let's make sure that we're not just saying I'm really sorry to hear that. Oh my gosh, I feel so bad for you.

07:39Like all of those things, like you're talking to one of your friends, right? And then boom, you can then roll into how do you help? All right, the next one. Now, this is a different technique and some people may disagree with this, but if you've been in the customer glared industry 4 industry And if you've taken call that customer, that just is hammering, right? But they keep saying, the same thing over and over We have a technique called the Interruption Buster, and what we'll do is we'll let the customer who on a tangent will let the vent for 60 to 90 seconds, let him get it all out. And most of the time, that's kind of how we start. this. We're actively listening and the customer's going on. But once we see this goes on for a minute, 45 seconds, they keep repeating themselves. We're going to gently interrupt them, which normally you would never talk over customer. And I the customer, she's just, you know, or he's like, but just like kind of as, as we go the 45 seconds, you know, then just think about like the customer that she's just, you know, or he's just, you know, hammering you, you and just saying the same, same thing over and over, and same thing over? And over and just be like, Hey, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Johnson, Mr H.

08:59Johnson, hey, I don't mean to interrupt you, right? But, but I totally hear what you're saying I understand exactly what you're saying. So here's the problem that you I do to make sure I can to help you as efficiently as possible. Can I just ask you a couple of quick questions and let's start the process of getting this fixed, right? So again, that interruption kind of it almost shakes them. If you're doing it properly, they then think. You're going to. To say something. They think that you're going to be like, come at them or be, or be mad, but you're not. What you're doing is you're saying, kind of shock them into listening to you. And I hear you kind of reiterating what they said, and then get them on the process where you're back in control of the call, right? And getting them to a resolution that is, you know, good for you, good for a good for them, however that's going to go, right? I really like that, right? [QA coverage remark omitted] It's for specific types of calls that, you know, when a customer just again, like we've said, they're going off, let them go off, but they're not moving the conversation, right. So you need to take control of that situation, take control of the call again, right, gently interrupt them, but then reiterate that their feelings I mean, all these, I really like.

10:32Like, I think all these are really great techniques to use. You know, the third one, we call it kind of the ownership approach, right? And with most situations that happen, when you have, this is another kind of, situation when you have a customer that calls and that says, I've called in, this is the fifth time, this is the fourth time. You know, you have not been able to help me.,,,,,, I'm not going to be able to help them now, I'm going to pass them off to somebody else, and you start to use I statements. Again, I have the fifth time I've called, So, Mr. Johnson, I want you to know that I'm going to... he personally charge in reviewing this situation. I'm going to personally try to get us to the end. First, because you actively listen to their main issue, right? And again, their main issue used to be this problem with maybe the product or the service, but it now that's not their main issue.

12:03Their main issue is that you need to the need to be heard. They don't think they're being heard. They think they're being left out in the rain, right? And they don't know who's gonna help them because they've tried multiple times. And they have failed. If that's happening in your call center But if you're that agent, I think that's when you can But I think they have a little bit of nuance, right? So again, we kind of call it the reframing technique, right? So you know, when a customer is like, you know your company is terrible, you know, I've been using the software for weeks, it absolutely glared and then, and then you kind of reframe like, so you heard they've been using this for weeks, right? I don't understand. I understand. You've been using our software for a couple of weeks. I guess it looks like there's some real issues here.

13:17Let's, break this down, right? You said it's the software, software., so what specifically are you having trouble with, right? So you kind of listen to, again,. Most of this stuff is actively listening. We have trained, not to go, I'm gonna go off I'm gonna go off on a little bit of, Hey Drew, opinions on enterprise phone system. Cisco versus Genesys. I promise you, I will get to that. Let me get, and. Let me get to these four and five and that's a great question. So, the number one of a head, right? We've trained the actual talking to a human being out. And And when you actively listen and hear, you know, there's a software issue, it's been for the last couple of weeks and you can then take just that little basic part and just reframe it, right? It one, it shows that you're actively listening to the customer. They feel like, okay, they're being heard. And you you're back in the driver.

14:29the driver's seat. A lot of this is call control, right, right? When you let the customer just kind of go and and go and go and go, you lose control of the call, and then the customer who's angry and kind of probably not totally in the, I don't want to say right mind, but they're agitated, they could say things that maybe they don't always mean. Or if you kind of take that call control back, right? There's a lot of things, again,- that you can then calm that customer down. The last one I really liked too, this was mine too, And it's almost like you're a Jedi mind tricking, right? Jedi mind tricking a customer with a calm questioning, questioning method, where you just kind of come at them with a really soft voice voice and you just start asking them a ton of questions, right? So you want to take them off, but again, obviously relevant like relevant to their problems.

15:20So, you know, hey, to help me understand your situation, Mr. Johnson, let me see how I can help, I just got a couple of quick questions, right? the problem, you know, turned it off and turn it I'm going to the end result that we're looking for. I think that's when you get at the end. It wasn't matter you, right the matter is you've been amazing. And you really help me. That's kind of the end result that we're looking for. I think that's when you get at the end? It. It wasn't matter you. Right. It's. You've been amazing and you really helped me. Right. That's kind of the end result that we're looking for. I think. Let's just talk quickly about things that you. You shouldn't do. Right. So agents should never say they or we. Like they It's okay if you let them rant for a little bit, but don't start to get irritated and talk over the customer, that will never end well stay out of that kind of negative frame of reference The other thing that I like is to try to kind of mirror how they're talking, right? So again, if you have somebody who's a little bit slower, say slower, but, let's say older, right, they do Thanks for watching!

18:28that the mirroring aspect is cool. And then the other thing is, if I had technique six, we would be talking about, you're starting like, whoa Mr. Smith, I hear you, right? And then slowly lowering your voice, right? Mr. Smith, nope, we're gonna take care of this right now. Let me just ask you some questions. I think we can get to the bottom. I can, I can help you here, right? So starting your voice a little bit higher and then kind of just lowering it. you're meeting their energy, you're lowering it, which makes them lower their energy a lot of times. I think that's kind of number five and a half or six is a technique. The last thing that I will say is no customer service agent has to be berated no customer

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19:39It almost never happens, right? And if it does, we'll make sure we have it all written up. But if somebody is so belligerent, so berating, borating, they're just swearing, right? Then we will have our agent say, Mr. Smith or Mrs. no one can be talked to that way, I'm here to help you. If you do continue that, I'm gonna have to disconnect the call and then no one's gonna be able to help you., and if they're like still go F yourself, you dump, then we will disconnect the call. No one deserves to be berated, no customer is worth having that done to you. So I think it's extreme situations, right? And then again, that needs to be documented. People need to know. Remember, everything that you do as a customer... service agent is being recorded, right. So you might as well just kind of use some of these techniques, try to make sure that you're putting your best foot forward with all these customers.

20:33And I think a lot of good things can happen to you. And again, most customers are pretty cool. Like literally most of them, they really don't want to be calling in, right. So they want to get through this as quickly as possible. They understand where you guys are going. So yeah, I think that there are some things with that. So again, if you guys have any questions on that, I really like this topic. I think when we talk about actionable items to bring back in your contact center, this is a huge topic that not a lot of people are good at. They don't really know what to do with it. It's not educated and trained properly in the contact centers of what to do with irate people depending on the different situations. And so again, I think this is what makes us pretty cool here at Expivia as well.

21:17We will go through a lot of this stuff with agents in ongoing training to make sure that everything that we're doing is good. Thanks. So again, if there's no more questions, I'll answer some of these things that you guys had here. So this is a question from Drew Opinions on enterprise phone systems, Cisco versus Genesys. Well, the first thing with Cisco is they really don't have a cloud offering, right? Most things that Cisco has is on-prem. It's a little bit more difficult, it's a great platform, but I think, you know, they have been kind of moved ahead of with the NICE, with the Genesys, with the Five9, just from the cloud aspect, right? They're not really known for their cloud product. I think Genesys, for me personally, it goes Genesys, or I'm sorry, it goes NICE CXone, And then I think it's Genesys and maybe just a hair back is Five9, right?

22:18And then we kind of talk about the dial pads, the talk desks, the UJets, kind of the Amazon Connect, all of those. So if I was a customer, or if I was consulting for you, Drew, and you said, here's my two choices, we would talk about on-prem versus cloud. If you're going on-prem, I think that's crazy, right? I would tell you that Genesys is the better platform now. They have more options when it comes to not just the ACD, but looking at workforce management analytics, getting into the AI space, right? Easier to do integ, integrations with, and just the overall platform is easier to use. Where you know, sometimes with Cisco, you almost need to be a freaking genius, right programmer to kind of do it. Everyone thanks. I know it's a big clock. I get comments on it all the time. So appreciate G that. And it doesn't work right now either. So it's just such a pain in the way to change the battery and the battery goes pretty quickly.

23:13So all right, guys, any other questions? Tick tock guys, Lincoln. I appreciate everybody kind of joining. Again, I think I want to do more of these. I'm getting really kind bored with the AI. Bored is not the right word, but overwhelmed with just completely talking talking about AI, you know, where But I would just say, everybody, you got to go to the cloud. I would never, ever, ever get an on-prem solution, especially as you're moving kind of to this AI space. But again, thanks, guys. I guess that's it. No more questions. Hre appreciate everybody. Hopefully this was helpful. We'll be on next week again. DM me, let me know, and again, if you need to just even have a one-on-one talk, we can talk or, or if you want me to do an episode on some larger topic, love to help you guys out. Thank you, everybody.