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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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22.

When you can’t resolve
the issue right away

This is somewhat similar to when a customer asks for a timeline on a feature, or when you are sending something along to another member of your team. Giving the customer some transparency into what the timeline looks like can be helpful, but avoid giving them a set date and time — otherwise you set yourself and your customer up for failure. Here’s an example response that you might use for this:

Hi there,

Thanks very much for your response here. I’ve been digging into this problem a little bit deeper on our end, and I’m going to need a bit more time to work with this. I apologize for the delayed response thus far, but hopefully, we’ll have this issue resolved within the next few days. Let me know if you have any additional insights that you’d like to share that might help, but otherwise, I’ll read out to you with any updates I have.

Thanks!

Be sure to set expectations within days, weeks, or months, rather than saying “I’ll get back to you tomorrow.” It’s always better to extend it a little bit longer and surprise and delight them by responding early than frustrate them by responding late.

It can be hard to tell someone “no” (or at least “not right now”), but doing so artfully and with care to help them feel like you are on their team and are working on their issue can help turn what could be a deeply negative experience into a truly positive one.

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21.
When a customer wants
to speak with a manager
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23.
When you need
to let a customer know
that it was their mistake
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