In the tough economic times we find ourselves in today, tensions are at an all time high. It is more important now that you learn how to handle customer complaints. Customers and prospects are feeling the economic pinch, so when they come in to your place of business you’ll sometimes have complaints that you may not have dealt with recently. This requires a little more sensitivity and courtesy when speaking with your customer to their satisfaction. The five steps we suggest below have been very helpful in this regard.

#1: Remember you are your company to its public. To the typical customer you are the company. How the customer feels about you will be how he feels about the company. Invest in good customer relationship management.

#2: Treat each customer like your closest friend. You, I and everybody else share the desire to be treated as important people. You naturally, automatically treat your friends this way. The successful customer service diplomat learns to treat everyone with the same friendly attitude.

#3: Customer service diplomacy gets first priority. Nothing else can be more important than the customer because nothing else matters without the customer.

#4: The customer controls your future. In a very real sense this is true. In some organizations favorable and unfavorable comments and letters from customers do go into your file and do influence promotion decisions. In a broader sense the success your company has that permits it to continue in business, grow in business, prosper and reward its people has a direct relationship to customer satisfaction.

And #5: Customer service diplomacy means going the extra mile. The extra courtesy, the extra knowledge, the extra effort – little things can have big impact. You can make a meaningful positive difference by going the extra mile.

When you program your mind with these five success guidelines by reviewing these five simple success guidelines several times they will become part of your memory in your attitude system. It will ultimately, automatically influence your thinking and your behavior. In this case it will influence your reactions to customers. The results are positive for everyone including you.

Now let’s talk about properly and successfully handling the customer with a complaint. Before we actually get into the five success guidelines for handling complaints there are just a couple basic ideas we should take a look at.

One is that a mistake made by you, someone else in your company or by a manufacturer of a product your company sells is not in of itself very likely to permanently damage your relationship with a customer. Mistakes happen.

Years ago popular buzz words in the federal government’s defense department and in industry were the ‘zero defect program.’ Although this sounds wonderful and represents a worthwhile aspiration it’s not consistently attainable. Some errors are going to happen…errors in judgment, errors in behavior, errors in service, errors in product manufacture or assembly and so on.

Don’t get me wrong I am not defending poor quality. I very much believe in excellence but also think we can acknowledge the difference between excellence and perfection. So mistakes will be made that cause customer dissatisfaction and you will be faced with those dissatisfied customers regardless of who made the mistake.

At that point, by the way, who made the mistake is irrelevant to the customer.

The important idea here is that the mistake itself won’t cost the company the customer depending on how the customer’s complaint is handled. In other words, it’s the success or failure of diplomacy in handling the unhappy customer that keeps or loses that customer. In fact, in many cases a customer with a complaint who is masterfully handled by a dedicated, talented customer service diplomat becomes a better customer than ever after the incident.

So we have to look at handling customers’ complaints both as a responsibility, part of being in business, part of our positions and as an opportunity to actually improve relationships with customers.

The second basic idea about customer complaints I’d like you to consider is that the rage level of the customer usually has very little to do with you or your company. Usually it is a reflection of an accumulation of irritation, frustration and stress. The problem with your firm was just the proverbial straw that broke the camels back.

In the movie ‘Heartburn,’ Jack Nicholson is ranting and raving at Meryl Street who finally starts crying and tearfully asks, “Why are you yelling at me?” Nicholson’s character thinks for a second and honestly answers, “Because you’re the only one here.”

Sometimes you are going to get the brunt of burnt toast, traffic jams, problems at the office, a parking ticket when some truly little problem with your company pushes the person over the edge of his stress tolerance level. You have to be wise enough not to take it personally, empathetic enough to understand the real nature of the customers anger and results oriented enough not to lash back at the customer.

The author of the book, ‘Life Is Tremendous,’ a motivational and humorous speaker Charles Tremendous Jones talks about the airlines losing his luggage so often that he expects it. As the plane is landing he starts thinking about the lost luggage and starts getting irritated. As he walks toward baggage claim he thinks about the idiots doing this to him again and he gets really steamed up. By the time he gets to baggage claim he’s hurrying to see that his suitcase isn’t there so he can go give the airline people a real piece of his mind only to find his luggage is there, which makes him really mad that they would get him so steamed up over nothing in the first place.

Just like Charlie your customer can start out with a rather trivial problem but by the time he gets to you he’s worked himself up with the memory of every previous problem he’s ever had with everybody he’s ever done business with. The customer is braced for a big fight. The customer is loaded for bear.

Is this fair?

No but to be successful as a Customer Service Diplomat we deal with situations and people that in our opinion do not behave as they should. So with these thoughts as a reference, let’s look carefully at the five success guidelines for handling customers with complaints and talk about these in your next sales meeting with your staff.