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Service With A Smile : Surviving The Holiday Rush    by Sarah Gentili

You’ve finished off the turkey, watched way too much football and visited or called the relatives. Without realizing it you start sizing up the house and yard, rearranging things to accommodate the decorations that have been gathering dust in your garage for the past year. Christmas is here and once again it’s time to break out the bright lights and start making lists. For those of us in customer service jobs, the end of Thanksgiving signals the beginning of days and nights filled with the extra stress of the holiday shopping season.

For years I worked in retail electronics, and fostered a love-hate relationship with the “Holidays”. In my experience it’s a time of extremes, when the best and worst of people come to light. I always liked the buzz a holiday crowd brought into the store, child-like glee at finding the perfect gift is contagious. The majority of the people are happy and pleasant, and it’s easy to smile while helping them find an item or ringing them up. Then there’s that one customer who comes to you, angry and confrontational, and you as a sales person must fix the problem. Make things right. Sometimes there is no way to make the customer happy.

So what do you do when a customer crosses the line and needs to be de-escalated? This can be a challenging situation to handle, especially if you’re a person working a register and on the proverbial front line. Having been in this situation more times then I can count, here a few things to try out when this happens to you.

1. Remain calm: If you let yourself react to an angry customer’s tone or body language, you’re only making the situation worse. With a clear head, you stand a better chance of getting to the source of the complaint and coming to a resolution.
2. Smile and empathize: It’s amazing how well this works, even over the phone. Putting yourself in the customers shoes and showing empathy will go a long way with most customers.
3. It’s not personal: The customer is having a bad hair day, totaled the car, got in a fight with their spouse. Usually customers who come to you and are upset, bring personal frustrations into the equation and let that fuel their anger.
4. Let them get it out: Give your customers a few minutes to vent. We all know that lines are long, its upsetting to wait and find out that you’re wasted time because your perfect gift was snatched up by the guy in front of you.
5. Remain in control: Whether you’re a manager or a cashier, you can be the first person an angry customer comes into contact with. Even if you can’t provide the final solution, how you handle yourself goes a long way to fixing things.
6. There are lines you can draw in the sand. Sadly, some people have very little self-restraint and can become very upset in a very short amount of time. If you as a customer service person know what you will and will not put up with, then you can be prepared for this kind of situation. Here’s an example for you. Currently I work in technical support and take inbound calls. I had a customer who called this week who started the call very upset and confrontational. I smiled and empathized with his frustration. I gave him a few minutes to work out his frustration before continuing with the call and did not let his rudeness phase me. He was calling about one of our older products and so there was a charge associated with the call. This was enough to push him over the edge. The customer became extremely upset and began swearing and cursing. I asked the customer three times to stop so we could proceed, the charge was policy. After the third time, I told the customer I would end the call if he could not calm down. This is something my company allows us to do and I have no problem ending abusive calls.

I understand that the holiday season can be difficult if you have to spend it behind a register. I believe that trying the steps I listed above will help you have a happier and more successful work experience. Good luck and happy holidays!

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Copyright  2007     Leland Pulley