Difficult People

I know of few jobs more difficult than those that are considered “Customer Service”. If you are like me and have a strong work ethic with a desire to please, you may find when the workload piles up and people are waiting on you that you feel a good deal of stress. You have to satisfy the customer while also keeping your boss happy. It’s a “rock and a hard place” sandwich sometimes.

In this day and age, most companies are running “mean and lean”, and if your job is customer support, this means trying to satisfy customers with a minimum, or below minimum staff and resources. And that puts all or most of the pressure on you. To make matters worse, people are accustomed to hearing phrases like “The Customer is King” or “The Customer is Always Right” and some will use this to their advantage, putting you “under the gun” to satisfy them. Don’t get me wrong, many customers are a joy to serve, but there’s always that one or a few that can make your day really tough. Some people might only be difficult because they are having a bad day. But some seem to have a bad day every single day.

There was a time I was faced with a very difficult person in a very difficult situation and I may not have handled the situation as well as I should have. I allowed my stress to get the better of me. My boss discussed it with me and I was required to attend a seminar on “How to Deal with Difficult People”. I attended the seminar and learned a few things. But I couldn’t help but ask my boss, in private of course, why I was being sent to a seminar on “How to Deal with Difficult People” rather than sending the difficult people to seminars on how not to be difficult!

Honestly, I think I had a valid point, but as you could probably guess, I didn’t win that argument. So when it comes to dealing with difficult people, especially when you are in a customer service role, it becomes necessary to be better than the person who is being difficult. It’s good to have a number of tools in your toolbox to help deal with difficult people. And it’s good to know about the do’s and don’ts.

What you want to do is to try to resolve the problem in a win-win-win way. In other words, find a way that satisfies the customer, relieves you of the face-to-face stress with an upset customer, and keeps your boss happy. What you don’t want to do is make matters worse for you or the customer. So what are the do’s and dont's of dealing with difficult people? Stay tuned for my next blog and I will dive more deeply into this perplexing dilemma!

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