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Atricle Dump - 7 Secrets for Moving Customers Out of a Hardball Mentality
As we all work hard to grow in our careers, we must not lose sight of what is most important in life. Sure, it's great to drive a great car, live in a comfortable neighborhood and "keep up with the Joneses," but there is more to it all than that. At the root of everything is providing for our families, which are there for us through thick and thin. They are the real reason for our hard work and sacrifice.When you see wealthy neighborhoods, they are impressive. Big homes, well manicured lawns with gardeners to tend to them, and usually, an expensive car in the driveway. Behind every one of those lovely places is a hardworking person or people, who devote much time and energy to affording such a lifestyle. Some have to work harder than others, but in general it is a big job to keep the bills paid on upscale homes.As a child, we lived in one of those homes. It was seven stories tall and was built into the side of a cliff form
If you feel you’re beginning to lose your cool, don’t be afraid to hit the “pause” button. You hit the pause button by putting a customer on hold or telling the customer you will call them back.
4. Heed Steven Covey’s Words…Understand, then be understood. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effect
Recent events like the Enron disaster have left hitherto unconcerned employees worried, and they have now begun asking questions about their benefit plans and filing lawsuits if they do not receive satisfactory answers. Fiduciaries and companies are being frequently dragged to court over actions resulting from their employee benefit plans. A well-thought-out employee benefit plan thus has become an important recruiting and retention tool.It is becoming increasingly necessary to find an advisor with the right background and expertise to help you in a specific situation. It is of utmost importance that you find an advisor who is concerned about you and keen on professionally resolving your problem.ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act) or employee benefits attorneys provide a great service to limit the liability of plan sponsors and help protect employees. An employee benefits attorney should be involved in any area
1. Confidently acknowledge and address anger. A big mistake among customer service professionals is to ignore a customer’s expression of anger or tip-toe around it. There is something known as the communication chain. When people communicate, they expect the person they are communicating with to respond or react…this response is a link in the communication chain. A failure to respond to communication leaves the communication chain unlinked…broken.
For example, If I walk into my office and say... “Hello Sherry, how are you?” ....and she says absolutely nothing, she’s broken the communication chain. And that leaves me feeling awkward, perhaps embarrassed.
If a customer expresses anger and we fail to respond to it, the communication chain is broken and the customer feels like they are not getting through. The customer might become even angrier and more difficult, as they are resorting to whatever it takes to feel heard and understood.
You can keep your angry customers from getting angrier by confidently acknowledging their anger and responding to it. You can respond to anger with a statement like, “Clearly you’re upset and I want you to know that getting to the bottom of this is just as important to me as it is to you.” This statement directly and professionally addresses anger – without- making the customer even angrier. Now that the anger has been acknowledged, you have completed the communication chain.
2. Allow the customer to vent, but don’t lose control. An Angry customer can be compared to an erupting volcano. When a volcano is erupting, there is nothing you can do about it. You can’t speed up the eruption, you can’t put a lid on it, and you cannot direct or redirect it…it must erupt.
When a customer is angry, they must experience and express their anger – and often this is done through venting. We should not interrupt an angry venting customer or tell them to “calm down.” This would be as futile as trying to tame a volcano. A volcano erupts and eventually subsides. Your angry customer will vent and eventually calm down.
Always let angry customers vent. In most cases, your customer will only need to vent for fifteen to thirty-five seconds. Venting beyond 35 seconds can become ranting and cause you to lose control. After a few seconds of venting, you’ll want to jump back in and move the conversation forward constructively.
3. Don’t react emotionally. It can be easy to lose our cool when a customer gets hot, but be warned: In most cases, showing frustration, impatience, or acting even mildly upset doesn’t help you move the customer out of a hardball mentality. Usually, losing our own cool does nothing but make the customer even more upset or our attitude will make the customer even firmer in his original position.
If you feel you’re beginning to lose your cool, don’t be afraid to hit the “pause” button. You hit the pause button by putting a customer on hold or telling the customer you will call them back.
4. Heed Steven Covey’s Words…Understand, then be understood. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effecti
Small business is hardly small when it involves 5.6 million enterprises, employs more than 60,000,000 and accounts for 80% of new job creation. Small business is the heart and lifeblood of our economy.Great democratic and capitalist experiments worldwide continue to produce a record number of new business start ups year after year. Never in history have so many entrepreneurs emerged to start new ventures.Unfortunately, there are a record number of small business failures each year also. Failures are harder to track but, in the U.S.A. alone, some followers place the new business failure rate as high as 80% in the first two years. The statistical basis for this extraordinary claim is a mystery. The most conservative estimates, however, based on government records of tax returns, place the new business failure rate at approximately 50% within the first five years, a number which is still shocking.Add to this the many s
If a customer expresses anger and we fail to respond to it, the communication chain is broken and the customer feels like they are not getting through. The customer might become even angrier and more difficult, as they are resorting to whatever it takes to feel heard and understood.
You can keep your angry customers from getting angrier by confidently acknowledging their anger and responding to it. You can respond to anger with a statement like, “Clearly you’re upset and I want you to know that getting to the bottom of this is just as important to me as it is to you.” This statement directly and professionally addresses anger – without- making the customer even angrier. Now that the anger has been acknowledged, you have completed the communication chain.
2. Allow the customer to vent, but don’t lose control. An Angry customer can be compared to an erupting volcano. When a volcano is erupting, there is nothing you can do about it. You can’t speed up the eruption, you can’t put a lid on it, and you cannot direct or redirect it…it must erupt.
When a customer is angry, they must experience and express their anger – and often this is done through venting. We should not interrupt an angry venting customer or tell them to “calm down.” This would be as futile as trying to tame a volcano. A volcano erupts and eventually subsides. Your angry customer will vent and eventually calm down.
Always let angry customers vent. In most cases, your customer will only need to vent for fifteen to thirty-five seconds. Venting beyond 35 seconds can become ranting and cause you to lose control. After a few seconds of venting, you’ll want to jump back in and move the conversation forward constructively.
3. Don’t react emotionally. It can be easy to lose our cool when a customer gets hot, but be warned: In most cases, showing frustration, impatience, or acting even mildly upset doesn’t help you move the customer out of a hardball mentality. Usually, losing our own cool does nothing but make the customer even more upset or our attitude will make the customer even firmer in his original position.
If you feel you’re beginning to lose your cool, don’t be afraid to hit the “pause” button. You hit the pause button by putting a customer on hold or telling the customer you will call them back.
4. Heed Steven Covey’s Words…Understand, then be understood. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effect
In our M&A practice we strive to align the right buyer with the seller and combine that with the appropriate deal structure. If we can do that while keeping the deal process flowing in a smooth and positive way, the outcome can be rewarding for both buyer and seller. PER-SE Technologies, one of the largest healthcare information technology and business services companies recently completed the acquisition of Flexestaff, a Web based staffing, scheduling, and shift bidding software company.PER-SE's Hospital Resource Management Solutions division provides a workforce management solution. That solution is installed in approximately 1100 hospitals. Flexestaff, on the other hand, was a two-year-old company with a cutting edge, high value solution, and a limited install base. The founders made one of the most difficult decisions that Entrepreneurs can make - to no longer go it alone.Several factors contributed to this decision.
2. Allow the customer to vent, but don’t lose control. An Angry customer can be compared to an erupting volcano. When a volcano is erupting, there is nothing you can do about it. You can’t speed up the eruption, you can’t put a lid on it, and you cannot direct or redirect it…it must erupt.
When a customer is angry, they must experience and express their anger – and often this is done through venting. We should not interrupt an angry venting customer or tell them to “calm down.” This would be as futile as trying to tame a volcano. A volcano erupts and eventually subsides. Your angry customer will vent and eventually calm down.
Always let angry customers vent. In most cases, your customer will only need to vent for fifteen to thirty-five seconds. Venting beyond 35 seconds can become ranting and cause you to lose control. After a few seconds of venting, you’ll want to jump back in and move the conversation forward constructively.
3. Don’t react emotionally. It can be easy to lose our cool when a customer gets hot, but be warned: In most cases, showing frustration, impatience, or acting even mildly upset doesn’t help you move the customer out of a hardball mentality. Usually, losing our own cool does nothing but make the customer even more upset or our attitude will make the customer even firmer in his original position.
If you feel you’re beginning to lose your cool, don’t be afraid to hit the “pause” button. You hit the pause button by putting a customer on hold or telling the customer you will call them back.
4. Heed Steven Covey’s Words…Understand, then be understood. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effect
We are reminded almost daily of improvements in the labor market and that jobs are now available, even if not plentiful. More workers than ever are quitting their jobs, worn out by the efforts that have been required over the past 5 to 8 years to be as productive as before with half the staffing of the past.If you have been unemployed for an extended period of time, you may find that when you apply for one of the positions now appearing, that you are competing with individuals who are either still working but looking to make a change, or with others who have been working until very recently. From experience, you know that potential employers are going to look at your long period of unemployment with a jaundiced eye.What approach can you take that will best allow you to compete and disarm that prejudice that interviewers seem to display against anyone who has not been in the competitive work force for an extended period?often this is done through venting. We should not interrupt an angry venting customer or tell them to “calm down.” This would be as futile as trying to tame a volcano. A volcano erupts and eventually subsides. Your angry customer will vent and eventually calm down.
Always let angry customers vent. In most cases, your customer will only need to vent for fifteen to thirty-five seconds. Venting beyond 35 seconds can become ranting and cause you to lose control. After a few seconds of venting, you’ll want to jump back in and move the conversation forward constructively.
3. Don’t react emotionally. It can be easy to lose our cool when a customer gets hot, but be warned: In most cases, showing frustration, impatience, or acting even mildly upset doesn’t help you move the customer out of a hardball mentality. Usually, losing our own cool does nothing but make the customer even more upset or our attitude will make the customer even firmer in his original position.
If you feel you’re beginning to lose your cool, don’t be afraid to hit the “pause” button. You hit the pause button by putting a customer on hold or telling the customer you will call them back.
4. Heed Steven Covey’s Words…Understand, then be understood. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effect
I believe that most organizations are miserable places to work. They are Corporate Cubeworlds. And no one is to blame. Companies have inherited their corporate culture from the Industrial Age and it just don't work anymore. People are unhappy and Corporate Cubeworlds are much less profitable than they could be.Before I go further, let me identify what I mean by the Corporate Cubeworld.Key Attributes of the Corporate Cubeworld:1. Work is a worker's primary responsibility in life and comes above family and personal concerns (even health) 2. If a woman takes time off to raise children, she becomes less valued and is deemed to be less committed to the company 3. Long hours and lots of face time are required 4. Your title on your business card is your identity 5. Hard, diligent work is not enough - you must do lots of self-promotion and gain the support of powerful players to advance in the Cubeworld<
If you feel you’re beginning to lose your cool, don’t be afraid to hit the “pause” button. You hit the pause button by putting a customer on hold or telling the customer you will call them back.
4. Heed Steven Covey’s Words…Understand, then be understood. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, author Steven Covey tells a story of a patient going in for an eye exam. After briefly listening to the patient’s complaint, the doctor takes off his glasses and hands them to the patient and tells the patient to simply “take his glasses where them.”
What are the chances you’d go back to a doctor that prescribes a solution without even diagnosing a problem? You don’t have much confidence in someone who doesn’t diagnose before they prescribe… But how often do we prescribe a solution before completely diagnosing the situation, in dealing with customers?
Seek first to understand. Before you try PRESCRIBE a solution for a customer’s problem, before you quote policy or tell a customer what you cannot do, seek to truly understand the customer’s viewpoint. How has the problem impacted your customer? Has your customer lost money, time, respect, or confidence because of this problem? Does the customer feel embarrassed, wronged, discriminated against, or powerless? Try to really understand what your customer is experiencing and feeling. when you respond, communicate your full understanding of the problem from the customer’s perspective. Only then can you truly diagnose, BEFORE you prescribe a solution.
Listening with the intent to understand gives you empathy for the customer and puts you in the position to solve the real issues. Once you really understand your customer, you naturally begin to communicate with empathy and to communicate more effectively. Your customer, who feels understood, can now begin to understand you.
5. Don’t belabor your point…no matter how right you are. be•la•bor - [bi-ley-ber] – verb: (1) to assail persistently, as with scorn or ridicule (2) work at (something) repeatedly or more than is necessary: He kept belaboring the point long after we had agreed.
If you really want to tick a customer off or incite an already upset customer, belabor your point. Repeat your point (your policy; your position) over and over again. I mean really badger the customer with your elementary explanation so that the customer feels they aren’t too bright.
Customer service professionals all around the world make the mistake of belaboring a point when speaking with customers. Don’t let this happen to you. Simply make your point once diplomatically and then enter into a constructive dialogue with your customer.
6. Get the customer saying ‘yes’, and if possible, keep them from saying ‘no’. When a person says “no,” all of their pride demands that they remain consistent with themselv
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