What to Do When Customers Are Having a Bad Day?

foreign
ER customer service and experience
expert and today I'm going to talk about
how to deal with customers who are just
having a bad day now you've probably
experienced this no matter how hard you
try to please a customer they aren't
happy it's frustrating but at the same
time it's also reality and speaking of
reality no matter how good you are at
creating an amazing customer experience
it's the customer's perception that
counts their perception is their reality
so I once went to an amazing restaurant
at least I was told it was amazing that
evening I had a bad cold the people I
was with raved about the food however I
didn't have the same experiences they
did and it had nothing to actually do
with the food it had to do with how I
was feeling when customers aren't
responding the way you want them to to
the excellent service you're providing
you might refer to them as difficult
customers the question to ask is what's
making them difficult you know maybe
they have a legitimate gripe or maybe
they have unreasonable expectations or
maybe as in my example at the restaurant
they aren't feeling good so I was
reading a LinkedIn post from Valerie
choniak the national director of patient
experience at Agilent Health who
described exactly what I'm referring to
a hospital may be known for its
Compassionate Care and its commitment to
taking care of its patients but if the
patient is in great pain they may not be
able to enjoy the experience that you
provide that patient may be the nicest
person in the world but when they're in
pain they may become a difficult
customer to choniak's point patients are
not purposely giving us a hard time they
are having a hard time sure some people
are chronic curmudgeons you may never be
able to make them so accept it then
there are other customers that are very
nice and they're great people just
having a bad day you must accept that as
well continue to do your best regardless
if you can turn the mood of a person
having a bad day into something better
you can declare Victory but don't stress
over it if you can't not every
experience you create for your customers
will be exceptional no matter how hard
you try but the point is that you do try
nobody is perfect and things can go
wrong that's okay it's how you fix them
that makes the difference and then there
are days when it seems that things did
go well but you still can't make the
customer happy no matter how hard you
try it's like a professional sports team
that played a great game but lost it's
going to happen it's not your fault if
you can sleep at night knowing you did
your very best you should sleep well so
do your best and remember number
sometimes customers are just having a
bad day well I hope you enjoyed this
short lesson thank you very much for
tuning in this is Shep hyken reminding
you to always be amazing