Dealing with Difficult Customers

from Marketing Profs:

Our Friend, the Difficult Customer

You have a great product or service, and you do your best to create an exceptional customer experience. Despite your efforts, though, you encounter difficult customers with more frequency than you'd expect. What gives? In a post at the Conversation Agent blog, Valeria Maltoni suggests 10 reasons this might be happening. Here are a few:

• Your customers resent that you're the only game in town, or one of their limited options. "You may feel you have a captive audience," she says, "but realize that it takes a special effort not to be arrogant in those [sic] circumstance, and your customers don't like the treatment."
• You're telling your customers which questions to ask. You steer the conversation in a certain direction, but it isn't where the customer wants to go. "If you were in court," she says, "they might say you were leading the witness. Allow customers to say what they want to say. Maybe ask clarifying questions."
• You don't follow up on feedback. If you acknowledge a customer's feedback but seem to sit on the information, it's going to create friction.

The Po!nt: No matter what you do, you'll always have to deal with difficult customers. "It's not personal," says Maltoni, "let's face it, there may not be a way of pleasing them. Does that mean you should stop trying?"

Source: Conversation Agent. Click here for the full post.

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