Dealing with challenging customers (In-House)

1 What makes a customer ‘challenging’?

• Why customers challenge us – understanding their drivers
• ‘Wearing their shoes’ – seeing things from their perspective
• Understanding our own personality style
• How to flex with a style that is different from our own
• Ways to quickly recognise a customer’s style
• The benefits of flexing with a challenging customer’s style

2 Practical exercise – forum theatre

• Participants take it in turns to deal with the trainer (who plays the role of the challenging customer)
• Observers stop the action when they hear or see something they deem wrong
• The participant in the seat gets a chance to use a suggested alternative line
• The participant who makes the suggestion has the chance to occupy the seat and deliver it themselves
• Frequent feedback from the trainer as to how the participant’s words are making him feel
• Opportunities to rewind the action if an ill-advised line is suggested and delivered
• Flipchart for capturing what worked, what didn’t work and why
• Mehrabian principle – the importance of body language and tone over words used

3 Questioning and listening skills

• How to use open questions to get the customer talking
• What questions to avoid and why
• The use of pauses and silence to reduce tension and build trust
• What listening is and what it isn’t
• Question funnelling – how to earn deeper disclosure through probing
• The power of summary

4 Transactional analysis explained

• What is transactional analysis (TA)?
• Exploring the TA states and why people behave in that way under pressure
• How to bring challenging customers to ‘adult’ state to reduce tension
• How ‘parent’ or ‘child’ behaviours can be inadvertently triggered
• Understanding the ‘behavioural cycle’ and how to break it
• Mini-role play ‘vignettes’ to demonstrate real time impact of ill-chosen words

5 How to build trust with challenging customers

• Techniques for placating current challenging customers
• Methods that the participants have already used effectively – understanding why those methods worked and how other participants can model them
• Participants’ experiences of trust having been lost – understanding why those experiences had that negative outcome
• How to ‘go the extra mile’ with challenging customers

6 Bringing a ‘real’ challenging customer to life

• Participants give the trainer a brief profile of a specific challenging customer of theirs
• 5-10 minute roleplay in which the trainer brings that individual to life
• Observing participants – without interrupting – make notes on what is and isn’t working
• Trainer stops the action half-way through to give feedback on how he is feeling
• Participant goes back into the roleplay having recalibrated their approach based on feedback
• Observers give feedback on what did and didn’t work
• Trainer comes out of character to explain the impact of the participant’s words and behaviours

7 Wrap-up

• Key learnings from each participant
• Individual action planning – steps that can and will be implemented in the workplace