Put Your Angry Customer at Ease

By: Jay Conner's Having

To deal with angry and upset customers is by far one of the worst responsibilities we must face on a day to day basis in the world of sales and business.

However, this responsibility, like so many others we must face on a daily basis, just comes with the territory.

Customers become angry for all sorts of reasons. Some are legitimate reasons.  Some are not. In any event it is our job to defuse the situation. Here are a few tips on how you can calm your customer down and put them at ease.

1. Give them your hand to shake
When I was in the banking industry, I worked many years as a branch manager. A customer’s body language would speak volumes as they approached my office. This body language allowed me to prepare for what was to come.

It is not difficult to tell when someone is angry. Their face scrunches.  Their lips tighten, and their brow wrinkles. They walk quickly with a purpose in their step, and you know they mean business.

My reaction to this type of body language was to reach out my hand to them as an offering of peace. I did this before they had an opportunity to start venting their anger. I would then calmly introduce myself and ask how I could be of help to them.

This technique will catch your customer off guard, and your acts of professionalism and sincerity will ease the tension and put the rationale back into your customers thought process.

This technique is by far the best way to begin any conversation that has the potential to be blown out of proportion.

2. Apologize to your customer
Once you have your customer seated and have allowed for them to vent, the first thing you want to do is apologize on behalf of your company for the way they have made them feel, or for the inconvenience they have been put through.

It really doesn’t matter if your customer is right or wrong, by apologizing to your customer you are being empathetic to their situation. This gives the customer the feeling that you are on their side.

Remember, when a customer has an issue, what they want more than anything else is for someone to listen to their problem and have an understanding of where they are coming from.

There is absolutely no need to take a bad situation and make it worse.

3. Resolve the problem
The last and final thing you want to assure your customer is that the problem will be resolved, or at the very least, the problem will not happen again.

To leave a problem unresolved and your customer hanging will only lead to more confrontations and wasted time down the line.

Remember, when time is wasted, money is wasted.

Again, putting out fires on a daily basis comes with the territory. The sooner you put out the fires the better.

Never take a customer complaint personally. Act as your customers advocate, and you will always prevent a bad situation from escalating.

Author Bio
Jay Conners has more than fifteen years of experience in the banking and Mortgage Industry, He is the owner of www.jconners.com. Article Source Free Website Content

Tips to get your Entrepreneurship off and running

By: Michael Johnson

One of the best of the small business associations is the University of Central Arkansas Small Business Advancement National Center (SBANC.)

While the ideal way of starting a small business would be to free yourself up from every other venture, problem, time consuming effort and obligation and throw yourself into starting a small business every waking moment, this isn't an ideal world. Few of us can afford the luxury of setting everything else aside to devote all our time and efforts, as well as capital - to starting a small business.

Some of us have the itch to become an entrepreneur but have to "keep our day jobs" while we give this starting a small business idea a go. It may well be, in fact, that starting a small business part time is the most common entrepreneurial process.

Part of succeeding at starting a small business if you have to do so part time is to know your schedule and your time limitations and choose a business concept that you enjoy, have some training or expertise in and can be accomplished around your work schedule. The other alternative is to change your work schedule either with your current employer or choose an alternative employer. Starting a small business takes effort and focus as well as time.

It may be that your current job is not only time consuming but also the type of work that requires a great deal of energy, a great deal of concentration, a very regimented schedule and perhaps the responsibility that tends to have you taking your work home with you either actually or mentally. This sort of work style doesn't lend itself well to starting a small business part time.

Let's look at an example of a journalist who has a successful writing and editing business from her home office. When she decided she was interested in starting a small business she had been working for many years in newspaper management. Her executive responsibilities required 70 and 80 hour workweeks and even then she took work home.

After many years of this she began to think more and more about her dream of starting a small writing business. It called to her more and more urgently. But how was she to even think of starting a small business when she had little time, energy or focus left in her busy work week? Besides, she had to work to keep the roof over her head.

What she did to determine if starting a small business was even possible, was to sit down and write out a budget, deciding where she could eliminate some non-essential expenses in her life, and what she absolutely had to have to live on. She then looked for, and found, a job that not only brought in enough money to live on but freed up a lot of her daytime work week hours as well as her mental focus. She took a customer service job in a call center.

Starting a small business was going to be possible with this job where it had not been with her newspaper career for a number of reasons. It required considerably less mental acumen, it didn't require that she take her work home with her, it was easy, the hours were flexible (she worked 3pm-midnight Thursday through Sunday) and the dress code was highly casual. She could work all day starting her small business and then don her jeans and go into the call center in the evening. Now she's quit that call center job and her dream of starting a small business has been fulfilled. Her business is thriving and she works at it full time.

You will find links to other small business associations from the SBANC site. These small business associations include the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) offering one on one counseling in person or online, the Small Business Administration (SBA) and its Small Business Development Centers which provide a ton of small business assistance including mentoring, training, publications, tapes, workshops and financing, Allied Academies - a worldwide research and training group, the Small Business Institute which provides entrepreneurial teaching and training, and the Federation of Business Disciplines, a group of educators devoted to small business teaching conferences.

Author Bio About the Author: M. Johnsona operates a variety of small business websites and newsletters.  Visit the website for many business start up ideas. www.smallbiztipscenter.com
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