How can you empathize with difficult customers and maintain a solution-focused approach?

👂 Active Listening: Give full attention to understand their concerns and frustrations. 🤲 Show Empathy: Acknowledge their feelings and validate their experiences. 🔍 Identify Underlying Issues: Look beyond the immediate complaint to understand deeper concerns. 🗣 Clear Communication: Explain things clearly and avoid jargon to prevent further confusion. 💡 Focus on Solutions: Steer the conversation towards practical solutions and options. 🔄 Stay Patient: Keep a calm demeanor, even if the conversation becomes challenging. 👥 Collaboration: Work with the customer to find a mutually agreeable solution. 📝 Follow-Up: Ensure their issue is resolved and check back for additional support if needed.

First off, put on your empathy hat. Step into their shoes, feel their pain, and show them you're not just a sales ninja but a human too. Listen actively, acknowledge their concerns, and let 'em know you've got their back. Now, here's the secret sauce – keep it solution-focused. Instead of dwelling on the prob, shift gears to the fix.

I that working towards a solution while dealing with difficult customers helps build confidence in the relationship and retain loyal customers after a solution has been arrived at.

There are a few things to unpack when we discuss 'difficult customers'. Difficult customers in my perspective is a customer that has an unmet expectation, a value that has been violated or belief that is not unaligned with yours. This doesn't make them wrong. It points to an opportunity to set a new standard of work together. Difficult customers matter because they are often a mirror to a deficiency in the business, an ineffective process or poor communication. All helpful things to acknowledge.

🤝🏼Using solution-focused questions and approaches to the conversation can shift the perspective and tone. Building trust and keeping it along the way is key. Avoid asking 'why' questions. Using 'what' questions is more powerful and productive. ❓"What are the main contributors to this situation." Exploring client expectations by asking: ❓"What is already working in the right direction?" (This question could remove emotional barriers if the discussion is not progressing.) In the spirit of progress, a follow up question could be: ❓"What would be the next sign of progress?"

One of the most effective means I've found in responding to a difficult customers is stating your intent and desire. As good as 'nodding' and saying 'i understand' is. Very rarely does it truly cut through the tension in a helpful way for the other person. In addition to this we have to aim to establish a collaborative conversation through empathy. E.g. Early in the call, state what your approach is. After hearing the customers concern, acknowledge, then restate how you want to serve them [the key] add you'd like their help. Ask if they'd be open to that. Most say yes, this provides an opportunity for shared understanding with a less combative experience.

I agree with the overall approach. I'd add, in the pursuit of being solution focused, continue to include the resolution to the emotional by adding it to the outcome. This does two things. It re confirms your care for how they feel and also begins to raise the emotion in advance of it being accomplished. Opens up their willingness to cooperate. E.g. Say "We have a couple of options to solve this, this will help us get X solved and remove the [emotion] you've experienced. You can only say this if you have high degree of certainty in the solution.

Couple examples of empathizing State the value of their comments "you raised something really important. I want to make sure we spent the right amount of time responding to this" Reflection: If there isn't an immediate resolution to that call. Perhaps what the customer has raised is more complex. State a future intent: "We've covered a number of options, we may have to look further than we have. I want to make sure you leave confident we're going to solve this and we get the right solution. I need to consult another team. Can I call you back?"

important to know, every customer is an individual with a story, pressures, needs, desires, fears and responsibilities. Holding the view of a person will help in each engagement to truly treat that person as one. Rather than going through the motions.