How To Deal With Difficult Customers: Tips and Advice

Dealing with difficult customers is an inevitable part of business. No matter whether you’re a business owner or an employee, challenging situations, unhappy customers, and customer complaints are likely to arise at some point. 

The good news is that there are proven strategies that you can implement to boost customer satisfaction and bring down negative reviews to a minimum. 

These techniques will not only help you handle difficult customers but will also improve the customer experience and positively influence customer loyalty in the long run. 

In the following sections, we offer tips on how to deal with difficult customers. 

Types of Difficult Customers

Before we dive into the details of how to deal with challenging customers, it’s important to first understand the types of difficult customers you can face.

There are four main types of difficult customers:

• The uncertain customer;
• The frustrated customer;
• The demanding customer;
• The complaining customer.

Here’s what you need to know about each one. 

Uncertain customer

The first type of difficult customer is the uncertain customer or indecisive customer. 

Imagine that a customer calls your support team to ask about a product or service that you offer. Naturally, a well-trained team will answer the question and handle any concerns the individual may have, which may be preventing them from completing a purchase.

However, let’s say that the customer asks several additional questions, all of which are open-ended, requiring time-consuming dialogue. Not to mention that when dealing with an indecisive customer, you may come across a vague customer who’s struggling to express their worries or form the right questions. 

Although it’s important to tackle the customer’s concerns if you want to make a sale, the truth is that the communication process may sometimes take much longer than appropriate.

For the time that your team has spent explaining and answering questions, they may have made several sales with other customers. 

Annoyed customer

Another type of difficult customer is the annoyed or upset customer.

In most cases, an angry customer has their reasons for the way they’re feeling. For example, the case might be that they’ve been forced to wait for hours to get a hold of a team member from your business to solve the customer’s problem. Or perhaps a frustrated customer has received a product or service that did not meet their expectations. 

What’s important to understand about this type of customer is that you can come across very rude customers who can even be verbally abusive. 

When dealing with upset customers, even when they’re extremely angry, it’s important to first apologise for the inconvenience your company has caused. 

To make angry customers remain calm, make sure that you not only offer a generic apology but also explain that you’re aware of the factors that made them feel this way. You can also offer compensation to make up for their frustration. 

Demanding customer

Next, there are many customers who fall under the category of the impatient customer. 

Let’s look at a common demanding customer scenario.

A shopper gets in touch with your team about a problem they’re having with a product. The team member responds that they will have a look into the situation and they will shortly get back to the customer.

A few minutes after the call has ended, the customer sends an email, messages your company on Instagram, and reaches out to your support team complaining that they still haven’t heard back from you.

The best course of action, in this case, is to stay calm and explain your company policies when it comes to support. In a professional tone, point out your business hours and any documentation outlining your responsibilities for handling complaints. 

Complaining customer 

The final type of difficult customer is the complaining customer. 

Complaining customers are not the standard shoppers that you receive occasional complaints from. They’re the individuals who regularly whine about company changes, updates, new products, and others. They’re usually active across multiple communication channels, actively trying to receive attention. 

The best way to handle complaining customers is to understand that it’s a mission impossible to satisfy them for a long time. Usually, the root cause of the problem with complaining customers is not the business – it’s their personality and mentality. 

Be polite, answer their questions, and address their concerns. If they’ve spent a long time communicating with one support agent, it might be a good idea to ask another agent to take over. Sometimes, a fresh communication approach is the answer. 

Tips for Handling Difficult Customers

Now that you’re aware of the different difficult customers, it’s time to explore how you can handle the communication well and turn them into loyal customers for your business. 

Stay Calm and Composed

When dealing with difficult customers, it’s utterly important to stay calm. Take a deep breath before responding in any way and ensure that you tackle the situation politely and professionally. 

The worst thing that could happen is responding in an aggressive way. When customer service agents return the aggression and rudeness during a conversation, customers feel even more inclined to escalate the problem and switch to another business. Not to mention that disrespecting a customer is one of the quickest ways to ruin your reputation management.

Rather than taking a client’s anger personally and reacting impulsively, gather your thoughts and observe the available information. 

Actively Listen to Customer Concerns

One of the best ways to leave a customer feeling heard and valued is to actively listen to what they have to say. To achieve this, we recommend practising active and reflective listening. 

When you’re actively listening to a customer, you’re fully focused on understanding, responding, and remembering what they’re saying. Use body language (like nodding and leaning in) to demonstrate that you’re present in the conversation and avoid interrupting. 

On the other hand, reflective listening is all about mirroring and paraphrasing what the customer is saying to show that you understand their point of view. This method also enables the shopper to hear their words reflected back to them, which can sometimes make them feel less angry.

Both active listening and reflective listening show the customer that they’re heard and understood, thus establishing a connection between the shopper and the support agent. 

Show Empathy and Understanding

Another way to make the customer feel heard is by showing empathy and understanding. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and do your best to look at the situation from their point of view. 

Would you feel the same way? Would you be angry? What actions would make you feel better as a client? Answering these questions and changing your angle can help you find the right solutions even in the most difficult situations. 

Make the client feel special and valued by asking them additional questions to get an even deeper idea of their standpoint. Ask open-ended questions to get more clarity and form possible solutions based on the received information. 

Maintain a Positive Attitude

Sometimes, it won’t be enough to politely explain the solution to the client. Many customers are ill-tempered and will do anything possible to receive attention and turn your workday into a nightmare.

However, maintaining a friendly and positive attitude is key. By turning negative comments into positive responses, you can completely transform the way the customer views your brand and communicates with you.

For example, instead of saying “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do” you can say “Thank you for raising this up, we’re doing everything we can to deliver your product as soon as we can”.

Set Clear Boundaries

Dealing with customers means that you can start a conversation with anyone. This includes people who are sexist, abusive, racist, and more.

Setting clear boundaries is fundamental. 

For instance, if you notice that a customer is abusive and insulting, inform them that you refuse to continue the conversation until they calm down. If necessary, end the call to demonstrate that you stand behind your words.

Use Effective Communication Strategies

When communicating with difficult customers, it’s fundamental to have proven customer interaction techniques up your sleeve. This will help you create more effective communication, creating room for quick and easy problem resolutions. 

The core methods to use include:

• Responding promptly; 
• Being honest and transparent;
• Offering a solution;
• Accepting responsibility.

By putting in place these core communication standards, you can make sure that your customer interactions are as flawless as possible. 

Use Positive Language

Believe it or not, the use of positive language when dealing with difficult customers can be a complete game-changer. Positive language often reinforces trust and can dramatically reduce the levels of anger and dissatisfaction in a conversation.

For example, imagine that a customer wants help with a technical challenge they’re facing. If a customer success manager responds with something along the lines of “I’m sorry, I can’t help you with that”, chances are that the client will become even more frustrated.

Instead, you can answer “This is not my area of expertise but I can put you in contact with another agent from our team who will be able to help you”.

Provide Clear and Concise Information

When striving to achieve outstanding customer relationship management, it’s important to always offer short and clear information.

If a customer is already frustrated with your company, product, or service, the last thing you want is to indulge in lengthy explanations with confusing information. This will make the situation even worse, surely angering your clients and potentially forcing them to leave your business and leave a bad review.

An effective alternative is to offer clear and concise information, which is easy to understand for the shopper. Provide a well-organised, step-by-step action plan and explain it in plain language.

Manage Customer Expectations

One of the biggest reasons for unhappy customers is unrealistic expectations. 

To set clear expectations, make sure that you handle complaints or difficult situations with transparency about your products, services, timelines, and processes. Be honest about all that you can offer and all that you cannot. 

It’s always better to underpromise and overdeliver instead of tricking shoppers into believing that they’ll receive more than you can provide. If necessary, make sure to clarify the roles and responsibilities within your team. This can help difficult customers understand that you may not be the best person to contact. 

Offer Solutions and Alternatives

While there are some consumers who regularly complain and seek attention, there are other customers who truly seek a resolution to a problem they have. 

After you’ve compiled all the necessary information about the way the customer is feeling and the challenges they have, speak slowly and offer a solution.

The solution may come in the form of a product update, a compensatory offer, a discount on future purchases, free shipping, and more. 

Know When to Escalate the Issue

Although escalating the problem to higher management is not always a good idea, in some situations, it may be the only available solution.

If you feel like there’s nothing more that you can try and the unhappy customer is not responding well to your communication techniques, it may be best to escalate the issue to management.

This will certainly make the customer feel more valued and demonstrate that they’re being taken seriously. It’s also likely to lead to quicker problem resolution. 

Practical Techniques for Resolution

When it comes to conflict resolution, there are a few practical techniques worth knowing about.

Below, we share some of the most reliable ones along with their resolution process. 

Implement the “Feel, Felt, Found” Technique

The first technique you can try is all about understanding the customer’s emotions and acknowledging their feelings. In its core, this technique aims to offer a solution by demonstrating to the customer that you understand their concerns and challenges.

The process starts with expressing empathy and understanding the customer’s feelings. Next, it’s key to relate to them by sharing an example of when you’ve felt in a similar way. Finally, the “found” stage requires that you provide a solution that has worked effectively for other customers in a similar situation. 

Apply the “Broken Record” Technique

The “broken record” refers to a customer who constantly repeats the same thing over and over again, despite your attempts to explain the situation from a different angle or offer a solution.

You can apply this technique by clearly stating your main message. This could be a company policy, a solution, a discount that you want to offer, or others. Next, repeat this message calmly, even if the client continues repeating their point of view. You can rephrase slightly but make sure the message remains the same.

The most important thing about this technique is remaining calm as otherwise you could escalate the problem. 

Use the “Last Resort” Method

If you find yourself in a situation where you’ve tried different approaches yet the client still feels disappointed or unhappy, it’s time for the “Last Resort” technique. 

First, give it a last try to use other options like empathy, problem-solving, and others. If the client is still uncooperative, state one final option that you can offer. In case this option is still not accepted, simply escalate the problem to management. 

Long-Term Strategies

Of course, there are also a range of different long-term strategies that can help your team adequately handle difficult customers. 

Train Your Team for Difficult Situations

A proven way to improve your agent performance in challenging situations is to offer extensive training. 

In most cases, it’s extremely valuable to set up mock-up scenarios where you play out potential situations. This enables your customer service agents to gain an understanding of the types of communications they could come across. It also equips them with possible solutions in advance.

Create a Customer Feedback Loop

Another effective long-term strategy is to build a customer feedback loop that allows you to gather, analyse, and act on feedback. 

This “loop” is meant to be a continuous cycle of collecting valuable customer reviews and feedback in order to make improvements where possible to minimise dissatisfaction. 

Develop Robust Customer Service Policies

Naturally, excellent customer service is another bullet-proof strategy for dealing with difficult customers. 

When hiring a new customer service representative to your team, make sure they’re either highly experienced and bring outstanding customer service skills to the table, or they undergo training. 

Ideally, customer service representatives should be capable of providing exceptional service to any client, no matter how difficult they can be. 

Build Strong Customer Relationships

You can explore different avenues to build stronger customer relationships with your clients in the long term. 

This can help establish communication based on mutual trust and understanding. Making your customers feel valued and appreciated can significantly reduce difficult situations. This is mostly due to the fact that your shoppers will feel comfortable enough to reach out to you before the problem escalates. 

Strong customer relationships are also likely to mean more patient clients and individuals open to discussion.

Analyse and Learn from Difficult Interactions

Last but not least, make sure that you’ve put in place practices that enable you to learn from your mistakes.

Where possible, record the ways you’ve dealt with difficult clients in the past, making note of both the positive and negative scenarios. Review these together with your team and analyse how you could’ve handled the situation differently.

Conclusion: Turning Challenges into Opportunities

Dealing with difficult customers is not a pleasant experience, especially if you don’t have much experience in the field and enter the arena unprepared.

However, by following these tips on how to deal with difficult customers, you can turn around any situation, no matter how challenging it is.

As a result, you can improve your brand loyalty and enjoy positive communication with clients. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s the biggest barrier to handling difficult customers effectively?

The biggest obstacle to handling difficult customers effectively is poor customer service training, anger management problems, and the inability to understand the customer’s point of view.

What’s the best way to stay calm when a customer is being unreasonable?

Take a deep breath and maintain a neutral tone. Remind yourself that the customer’s frustration is not personal – they’re simply upset with the situation, not you. Staying calm helps you remain in control of the conversation and practice active listening to de-escalate the issue.

How can I effectively handle objections?

One of the things you can try is reflecting back the objections of demanding customers and following up with additional questions.