Turn customer rage into total control

Picture the call. Somebody phones in already deep in the anger band. There is something wrong with my Amazon account, and they are not saying it, they are spitting it. The normal reaction is to get thrown back on your heels. Where is this coming from? Why is this person so mad at me? What did I do?

So you start trying to handle them, the way you were taught. And you are never going to do it. Not because your handling is weak, but because they are not hearing anything. Nothing. No matter what you say, it will not get through. Impossible.

They might even have a point. Or they could just be dramatizing. It does not matter. They are coming in trying to rip your jugular out of your throat, and you can feel it. You can feel the meanness of it.

The moves that never work

When that energy hits, most people reach for one of two moves. The first is to run away from it. Hide under the desk, pass the call, hope the storm blows through on its own. It does not.

The second is to go polite and small. Yes sir, but. But. But. Trying to justify, trying to explain, trying to calm the customer down with reasonableness. You already know how well that works. Being reasonable at a furious person has never once made a person less furious.

There are no perfect solutions to a call like this. But there is one that works. I learned it myself, I taught it to my people, and I can tell you factually that anyone can learn to do it.

Match the fire

The person comes in breathing flames, and you go right with them. I know. I hate it too. It is horrible. These guys who work in the warehouse, I could murder them. If I ever find the one responsible for this, I promise you, heads will fly.

What you are doing is matching their tone level. Their heat, their pitch, that vibration they are riding. And when you match it from their side of the fight, something remarkable happens: it cancels out. The customer came in loaded for a war and instead found an ally who sounds angrier than they are. There is nothing left to fight.

I taught my customer service people to come back with a response even more ferocious than the one the customer brought in. Not aimed at the customer. Never at the customer. Aimed at the problem, on the customer's behalf. That is the whole trick. You are not defending the company against them. You have jumped over the counter and joined their side.

One response does not fit all

Now, a warning before you run off and try it. People come in angry for different reasons, and each reason has to get its own response. There is not one line that fits every call.

If they are calling up mad about the French fries being cold and you are ranting about fixing the stapler on the desk, you have matched nothing. You are just a second crazy person on the line. The match has to land on their problem, at their intensity, or it cancels nothing at all.

Drill it before you need it

The good news is that this can be drilled. You run it in training, over and over, until your people have faced a murderous, bloody-minded caller so many times in practice that the real thing does not scare them anymore.

Because here is the truth: it rarely happens. I swear to you, a caller like that is rare. And that is exactly why it throws you. You are not expecting it, it comes out of nowhere, and the untrained rep freezes, or grovels, or fires back. Drill it, and instead of freezing, your people lean in and take control of the call from the first sentence.

Anyone can learn this. I have watched it happen on my own floors. The angriest customer on the worst day stops being something to hide from and becomes just another call your team knows exactly how to handle. Hope it helps.