Utilizing Customer De-escalation Techniques to Handle Upset Employees

So what do you say to the person who is violated?

What do I say? Yeah, the. The. You know, as. As weird as this sounds, I. I have a very, very serious conversation with them in my office. And that conversation is along the lines of. And. And by the way, listen. And not to turn this into an HR meeting, but to certainly, you know, explain the way it should be. But I always have another person present, and that is, hey, are you okay?

And then I listen, you know, are you okay? What's going on in your head? Excuse me? What can we do to make sure that you're okay? Because I will not accept this type of behavior. And I'm so sorry that it happened to you. And I listen to them, and that's really, really what I do. And that goes. That goes a long way. That goes a long way in terms of just.

Making sure that they know that the store supports everything they're doing.

Yeah. What happens to sometimes with those sort of. With those sort of behaviors that are aggressive or emotionally based on and not, you know, not productive or fair for anybody is when they happen to people, people become parrots in a sense that if that's allowed, then you get more of that and it kind of perpetuates itself. Right. So I handle. I handle the. The person on the receiving end of that the same as I would handle an upset customer in the sense that I say something to the effect of, I'm so sorry this happened. We're going to use this to learn and get better. In no way is it acceptable, and we're going to make a big deal out of it. And when you say that to a customer or to somebody, then they understand that this isn't something we're going to parrot, because that's a concern. Also, on top of them understanding that it isn't right and trying to help them through that. And then. Yeah, then I would follow up with a feel question. So tell me how you feel. And then that opens up the. The. The floodgates of they're gonna. Well, it tells you where they are, because when you say, how do you feel they're gonna go to where they are, not what they think they should say, if that makes sense.

I was gonna say, I think it also just shows the difference between, you know, either a manager, an HR department that.

Is apologizing because they truly are sorry and they want to fix the situation, and they actually care about the employee that got hurt or that got disrespected versus an HR or a manager that's just saying sorry just for, like, legality purposes or just because they have to in order to cover their own butt? Like, actually showing true empathy to that employer or to that employee, I think is what makes such a huge difference between the two. Like, actually caring and wanting to make sure that they're genuinely okay is so important. And you don't see that a lot. I feel like, Feel like.

And I want you to realize what you both said, it's so important. You know, the one statement I made was, you know, getting out in front of it. And the one statement you made was communication in regards to even a service customer. Well, you know, people and service customers, I mean, everybody, the biggest problem they have typically is just lack of communication. Yeah, they just, they just don't feel like they're being communicated with. So, so when, when I talk about the importance of getting out in front of it, you're. Y' all are dead on, both of you. You know, you just can't, you just can't broom things. You just can't think they're going to go away. And, and, and you're 100% right, ma', am, in saying that, hey, listen, you know, people want to know that you genuinely care about them. They don't want to feel like, you know, that you're just going through the motions. They want to know that you really feel like you have some skin in the game.

And I think, especially in our industry, the thing that you said there that's so spot on is it's mostly about communication. And what we miss is communication is two ways. And so, like, a lot of times the customers escalate through the process because the communication has been one way. It's been an advisor or a salesperson or whatever telling them how they're wrong or telling them how it is or telling them the policy. Like our policy is this. And that's not communication. Right. That's. That's a dictatorship in a sense. And so, you know, saying like, I'm so, like, it doesn't matter if we're right or wrong. They're there. I can't think of a customer issue I didn't fix by. And even customers that are nuts, like nuts and their expectations are crazy and you know, they're, they're trying to get over on us or whatever. When you say, like, I am so sorry this happened to you. We're going to use it as a learning experience and I'm going to make a big deal out of it. Two things happen. There is now I'm going to listen and they're going to talk, and maybe they're going to talk for 30 minutes, but nobody's listening. The second thing is, is I'm. I'm teeing up the fact that, like, let's say they are wrong when I say we're going to make a big deal about this. They do have the human element of, oh, I'm getting somebody in trouble. And that does bring things back to reality a little bit, because even the craziest narcissist understands that.

You'Re affecting other people in a weird way. So the thing, Mr. Mason.

That caught us about your story, and I don't want it to be missed on the audience, is that I think most of the time, these sort of situations that you're describing here, we don't talk about them and we try to pretend like that was never us.

Right.

And most of us, especially ones of us that have moved up quickly through the industry.

You know, we've made a lot of mistakes and we've done a lot of things wrong. And using those as lessons and looking back and talking about it is sending the elevator back down, in a sense. And so I think that that's a huge tribute to your character. And, you know, just you as a person that you're putting that online and you're being vulnerable and saying, like, hey, you know, I was a jerk and this is what I learned from it. And making somebody else the hero of the story is really, you know, beautiful.

Yeah.

Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driver Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 Ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.

It.