Angry Customers Poison Teams

If you let them!

Have you ever had a customer who clicked their fingers every time they wanted something and when you offered help, no matter how hard you tried they were never satisfied and even rude?

I remember a man just like this when I was in a customer-facing job working as part of a team.   This guy was so unkind that one of our team members even broke down in tears.  Our boss became more agitated and started to pick on each one of us out of frustration and temper. 

What do you think happened next?

Two things.

First the poison spread and affected the whole team and boss to the point where other customers noticed.  In fact the complaints built up momentum.  Some of the complaints were justified because we were not working well as a team.  Some however were not, but in true crowd behaviour several people lost their sense of individuality and followed the emotions of the crowd, or in this case fellow customers.

Even the odd customer who managed to remain distant from the crowd, still had that look in their eye that read ‘there’s no smoke without fire’ and assumed that there must be something fundamentally wrong with our service if so much negativity was anything to go by.

Negativity bred negativity and the downward spiral was crystal clear as the reputation of our company went down the toilet.

That is, until the second thing happened. 

One of our team members took a stand.  He stopped following our own crowd, we his fellow workers and broke the festering bubble that both customers and team were feeding.  He made everyone laugh!

One incredibly witty, relevant comment and everyone melted. 

Now it’s hard to be funny without insulting some people, so tread carefully.  But the point is, he managed to turn a dreadful situation into something upbeat and fun.

From that moment, we the team continued to enjoy working for the customers and the customers enjoyed our efforts.  In fact, we received masses of verbal and written comments to say what a fantastic experience they had encountered and would definitely use us again.

What happened to the original grumpy customers?  Well he went very quiet and we even managed to make him smile, well just a little.

Moral of the story – positive emotion wins every time.  Lighten up, the customers love it.