The Customer Authority

Have you ever had to complain about a service? Maybe you were upset enough you felt the need to vent a bit to the customer service representative. Unfortunately, that customer service rep probably could have cared less and either stared at you blankly, or possibly even told you the words you didn’t expect to hear, “There’s no need for you to be upset”.

If I were to hear those words, I’d probably have to stop myself from throttling that customer service rep. Because if there’s a problem and I’m upset, I have every right to feel that way. And the customer service rep should understand it.

Which takes us to the next item on the 25 Things You Should Do in Customer Service list: Validate the customer’s feelings.

Validate a customer’s feeling can actually go hand-in-hand with acknowledging there’s a problem, but as I mentioned in that post as well, you are not necessarily agreeing with the customer. You are simply showing an understanding.

For example, say a customer is upset because a service tech failed to show up for a scheduled appointment. The customer had already taken time off of work and was now going to have to be inconvenienced by having to reschedule again. They are venting to you how much an inconvenience is to them. Your response can be:

“I understand completely, Mr. Jones, you have every right to be upset. If I were in your shoes, I would be upset too. Let’s see what we can do to try to fix this for you.”

The validation part here is agreeing they have the right to be upset. You never, ever want to tell a customer they shouldn’t feel the way they feel. Even if you think they’re being irrational, no one wants to be told how they SHOULD feel. You’re only going to make things even worse for them and yourself if you do.

By validating a customer’s feelings, you’re not only going to calm them down, but you’ll have someone who’s more willing to listen to you and give you the opportunity to correct the situation without continuing to be upset and/or irrational. You’ll also (hopefully) move up a notch on their respect list, because you respected them by validated their feelings in the first place.

Any positive experience you can create with a customer is an important opportunity. Sometimes it’s easy to disregard or acknowledge a customer’s feelings when they are upset. But that is truly the BEST opportunity for you to show you what kind of employee/business you are.