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§§ Table of Contents − − − − − − − − −
Ultimate Guide to Difficult
Conversations
1. Introduction 2. When you don’t know the answer 3. When you have to transfer a customer to someone else 4. When a customer requests a feature or product 5. When a customer asks you for a favor that you cannot do 6. When there’s something wrong with the delivered product 7. When you close the conversation 8. When a customer is angry 9. When a customer is unwilling to pay 10. When a crisis occurs 11. When you have a frequently complaining customer 12. When customers complain on social media 13. When you have legal issues 14. When you have to deliver bad news 15. When you have an abusive customer 16. When customers cross boundaries 17. When the customer speaks a different language 18. When a customer asks a vague question 19. When customers ask when something is going to be available 20. When you or your fellow agents made a mistake 21. When a customer wants to speak with a manager 22. When you can’t resolve the issue right away 23. When you need to let a customer know that it was their mistake 24. When a customer reaches you by mistake 25. When a customer asks how your product is different from others 26. When a customer is worried about how secure your service is 27. When a customer says that they forgot their password 28. When you want to point a customer to your documentation 29. When a customer violated your terms of service 30. When a customer is not tech-savvy 31. When a customer is right, but your policy is not 32. When a customer sounds like a bigot 33. You’ve got this!

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12.

When customers complain
on social media

Some companies totally slay the social media game — their brand voice is strong with their responses to their customers, they do an excellent job at responding in a timely manner, and their feed is entertaining and informative. If you’ve got a really active social media presence for your company, you should expect that customers are going to reach out to you with both the good, the bad…and the ugly.

One of the quickest ways to get a response from a company is to tweet about it. I know I, sitting in a cramped airport waiting area, have tweeted my share of Angry tweets, and so has this angry customer of Proposify:

Angry customer of Proposify tweet

Len, from Groove, wrote an excellent commentary on what happened from this tweet that I will paraphrase.

After receiving that first tweet, the Proposify team responded:

Proposify team responded

While much of this tweet is great, they apologies and offered support for the issue, it’s possible that some would have taken issue with some of the tone in the “publicly shame” portion of the tweet. But, as we said above, companies that have strong brand personalities on Twitter do better with their followers, and it seems that Proposify is no different. After writing that tweet, the team at Proposify also followed up with an email:

Proposify also followed up with an email

This is an amazing email that covers all of the key elements of working with and addressing the issues of an angry customer. Not only that, but it also emphasizes the importance of being able to switch between channels. For complex issues, Twitter’s character limit can be a killer. It’s important to be able to transition away from Twitter into a better venue such as email, phone or video chat. One great way to do this, in the case of Proposify, could have been:

Sorry to hear you’re having trouble. We’d love to help more. Can you reach out at support at proposify.com, or let us know in a DM where is best to reach you?

This puts the ball in the customer’s court again, and they can let you know if they prefer email, phone, video or nothing at all.

Just to close up this section, how about this amazing response to the Proposify team from their original angry customer:

Amazing response to the Proposify team from their original angry customer
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When you have a frequently
complaining customer
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13.
When you have legal issues
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