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YOUR FRIEND, THE ANGRY CUSTOMER

Fear not the angry customer. He is not the enemy! Quite to the contrary, he is possibly one of the best friends your business has!

Every business has had to deal with angry customers. Even the best-trained, most conscientious customer-centric businesses have occasional lapses where they do not measure up to their customer's expectations. But if you get past the anger, tone of voice, occasional insult or invective, you realize that the customer is speaking to you because, although he feels that he has been wronged, he also feels that you can help remedy the situation. This is a golden opportunity to win and solidify your customer's loyalty.

A study by Technical Assistance Research Programs (TARP) shows that customers who have had a problem resolved successfully and amicably tend to be more loyal than customers who have never experienced a problem with a particular business. When that situation arises where things do not go the way the customer had hoped, smart businesses use that opportunity to fix the error quickly and happily. You learn from the error to ensure that it does not occur again. And this is where the angry customer helps you.

Here's how successful companies turn angry customers into loyal customers.

Step One: Be a Smart Listener

As all customer-focused businesses know, the world revolves around the customer, not the business. So when the angry customer calls, it is really your boss calling. Would you interrupt the boss when he or she is angry? Not if you want to stay employed. Therefore, it is imperative to let the customer say his piece. Do not try to resolve his issue before he's had a chance to explain not only the nature of his problem, but also the ramifications it has had on his life. The urge to fix a problem before acknowledging the pain is often where service calls go awry.

Many businesses place a high value on resolving calls quickly; they measure average length of call or interaction, and reward their reps for lowering the amount of time spent per incident. While this particular metric seems important to the internal operations of many businesses, we have never heard a customer say that the most important aspect of their call was to get off the phone quickly as possible. Frankly, if a customer is concerned enough about an issue to call or visit a business, then he wants that business to know the exact nature of that problem, and why that problem is bothering him.

While it is not a pleasant experience, this is

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