When dealing with customer complaints, support agents try to find solutions as fast as possible. But this is just part of the work to be done. Being able to keep the customer calm while you look for that solution is even more crucial. Let’s explore how you can effectively manage customer emotions and have them leave satisfied in the end.
Emotions and Customer Experience
Companies have long understood that emotions play a big role in driving customer purchases. It also plays a large part in customer satisfaction not just in the product itself, but also the services rendered by the company. But knowing which emotions trigger what actions can be challenging for businesses.
This is where the study done by author and Beyond Philosophy CEO Collin Shaw comes in handy. Shaw’s research aimed to determine the specific emotions that businesses should focus on based on the response of 50,000 people from around the world. Studying these responses, Shaw and his team identified four main categories of customer emotions.
Advocacy
This consists of just two emotions: happy and pleased. The advocacy cluster focuses on having the customer satisfied with the product or service they get. As such, this is considered as the highest tier in Shaw’s hierarchy. Here, good customer experience must evoke these emotions even when offering fixes.
Recommendation
In the recommendation cluster, the focus is on developing customer loyalty. Customers need to feel like the company they are interacting with cares about their well-being. The emotions associated here are Trusting, Valued, Cared for, Focused, and Safe.
Attention
The emotions in this cluster are the ones that directly impact short term spending. To progress to a longer-term interaction, you need to continuously hone these emotions every time a customer engages with you. The emotions listed here are Interested, Energetic, Stimulated, Exploratory, and Indulgent.
Destroying
These are the emotions that create a negative impact on your customers. In turn, that negative impact can trigger losses for the company. As such, you would want to avoid them in every stage of the customer experience. The emotions included here are
- Irritated
- Hurried
- Neglected
- Unhappy
- Unsatisfied
- Stressed
- Disappointed
- Frustrated
Shaw noted that some of the effects of these emotions might be rather subtle. However, once you understand how they impact the customer experience, you can better manage these during engagements.
Dealing with Customer Emotions During Complaints
Now that you understand what emotions impact the overall customer experience, it’s time to get into customer complaints. The first thing to know is what drives customer complaints. Some of the common reasons why customers would complain are:
- Low quality of products: Arguably the most common point of complaints. And with the advent of social media, customers might end up venting their issues in public, which can lead to negative impressions.
- Not keeping promises: Customers might feel like businesses are not able to live up to the promise they made, either during the initial purchase or the customer support stage.
- Poor customer service: Even a simple question that your customer support team is unable to answer can already be construed as poor customer service.
- Transferring from one agent to another: Customers can get irritated when they are transferred from one agent to the next without progress on their concerns.
- Hidden information and costs: Fees that suddenly appear after the purchase gives the impression that you are cheating on your customers.
All of these reasons for complaints often stem out from the frustrations customers have when seeking assistance. As such, you would want to control these customer emotions while looking for a solution that would appease them.
Controlling your Own Emotions
For your customer support team to effectively manage customer emotions, they need to also do that to their own. Customer support can be tedious work, with all the complaints piling up. This can cause agents to take on an aggressive stance when dealing with rather persistent customers.
One effective strategy to help your agents keep their emotions at check is by studying the first 40 seconds of a customer call. Here, you can observe why your agent has a hard time calming down when entertaining customer complaints. After the call, talk with them about their experience and discuss strategies that they can apply to themselves.
In particular, you would want to focus on teaching your agents on how to de-personalize the complaints. Remind them that customers’ initial frustrations are not about them. (agents). Rather, it\’s due to their frustrations about not having their issues resolved. As such, agents should be willing to lend a hand.
You would also want to assure your service agents that you are behind them in their efforts to resolve customer complaints. Agents can sometimes be hesitant to act on these complaints if they are not sure whether managers would approve of their actions. Assure them that you will be there to correct any issue that they might have when helping customers.
Keeping Customer Emotions in Check
Now that your agents feel at ease when handling complaints, you can better guide them on how to deal with customer emotions. Here, you would want to assure customers you are ready to listen to their complaints. Let them talk about their issues while you take note of the important details.
Aside from the facts, you would also want to acknowledge the customer\’s emotions that are present. For instance, you can tell them that you understand the frustrations of bringing home a product only to find out that it has a defect. This empathic approach will calm them down while you sift through the possible solutions to their issues.
Resolving Customer Issues
Once you have figured out solutions to a customer’s complaint, don’t just tell them what they are. Instead, walk your customer through how the solution should be implemented. To make sure that they fully understand how it works, encourage customers to ask questions.
At this point, you can also ask them about any wider issues they have and incorporate it into your solution. After confirming the solution, keep in touch with the customer a week later. If they are not yet happy with the solution, you can repeat the process until they are satisfied with the outcome.
Keeping Customers Happy
To keep your customer happy, you would want to go beyond just offering the solution they are looking for. You can also give discounts on their next purchase or vouchers. This small additional cost will go a long way in convincing them that you value them and increasing retention.
You can also use this strategy if the issue can’t be resolved. In this case, provide them with several options like having the product replaced or refunding the money they spend. You can then stack these coupons or vouchers on top of that as a means of saying sorry that you are not able to resolve the issue.
Handle Customer Emotions Well and Keep Everyone Happy
As you can see above, being able to effectively manage customer emotions will spell the difference between a satisfied and an irate customer. Once you become more attuned with your patrons’ feelings, customer support becomes easier to do. Explore this strategy and keep them smiling all the way.