How to deal with Irate Customer Escalations

Have you ever been the recipient of an escalation, where the customer is completely flustered, angry, and irate?

What was it like dealing with situations like that? Stressful isn’t it?

What about your colleagues, how do they deal with similar situations? I’m sure you’ve heard them go through the endless apologies to try and appease the customer.

But the thing is, customers are not after your apology. That wouldn’t do anything for them, and it will not get them closer to achieving what they want.

What they want is a result. And that’s what you should be focusing on.

Ask your customer this question:

If this call were to accomplish everything you could have possibly hoped for, what would that look like?

See how that changes things, and take it from there. For example, your customer might say things such as:

• “First I want you to investigate why the person I am complaining about gave me a false promise. I want an email update to be sent to me regarding that.
• Second, I want you to tell me what the situation really is, why things are not progressing based on the agreed timeline.
• Lastly, I don’t want to go out of my way to proactively reach out to you again to follow-up. I want you to contact me at this time of the day, any day this week, to give me an update.”

Take note of what your customer said, and work on addressing those.

Most importantly, do the Recap and Closing Question technique to wrap up everything that was discussed, and ensure the best chances of getting a high CSAT score.

If you want to learn more CSAT improvement techniques applicable to just about any industry, read my article on The 4 Proven Building Blocks for Best-in-Class Customer Satisfaction.

And if you haven’t yet, download your FREE (for a limited time only) eBook – The Business Optimization Blueprint, where I show you a straightforward 5-Step Process how to transform your business and take it to the next level.