How do you handle frustrated customers? 😡

[ElisabethB]

Every business has them from time to time - frustrated customers. While some businesses adhere to the old saying that the customer is always right, that isn't always a realistic approach. How do you handle unhappy customers? What was your best or worst experience with a customer? Reply to share your tips and success stories (or horror stories! 👻) with us!

[Bronze_Palms]

With unhappy customers, i do the best I can to understand where they are coming from and provide a solution. I provide a couple of solutions, then I ask them what they would like for resolution. Unfortunately I think some people are complaining just to complain and NOT for a resolution so I refund and ban them from the business.

[BofBArtStudio]

Probably the strangest and most disruptive customer experience was when a customer came to take a class with us, and finished the class, and left. Then came back in a few minutes later and said that she left her purse. Our staff looked all around and did not see her purse anywhere. She started accusing our staff of taking her purse and demanded to check their lockers.  Our manager handled it very well, responded calmly to her, and called me.  This was all happening at closing time and ended up being another hour of time past closing that we were handling this person.

While I was on the phone with the manager, I was pulling up the security footage. And the lady was getting very irate and refused to leave. 

The manager called the non-emergency police line and had an officer come, and I drove over there to show the security footage that showed that she had left with her purse on her arm and when she came back in a few minutes later, to start all of this disruption, she did not have her purse on her arm. The police escorted her out and she discovered that she had placed it on the floor of the passenger side of her car. And in the dark had not seen it there. 

She felt so bad about it all that she sent us a box of gourmet cookies the next day with a note apologizing.

[Lovewell]

This feels like it has been happening a little more often! Not due to errors on our part but we have noticed people are a little more on edge that usual. It doesn't take much to cause them to snap. 

We try our best to defuse the situation. We never know what someone Is going through. Not that that is an excuse to treat people poorly but how we respond is our choice and on us. Reacting in anger to someone who is angry never fixes the problem. 

We had someone lose their actual mind over these adhesive coffee cup stoppers that we put on our hot drinks. They are mad with FDA Approved food grade adhesive. He ended up calling the company and screaming at the owner. He was told by 3 separate people, one being us, two being a manger, and three being the owner of this company and he was told the same thing. He proceeded to scream at the owner and the owner had to hang up. Sometimes people just want to be angry and you have to let them and move forward. 

[fsalazar]

I think this is a very helpful thread, and I will say that I have changed my approach from when I first started 7 years ago - I used to be a lot more apologetic and worried about unhappy customers, willing to do anything to get them on side. Unfortunately, it seems that entitled and problematic customers do in fact only get worse, and I now am much more balanced - if we did something wrong I am happy to fix or refund, but I have let multiple customers know that they are no longer welcome in my business due to their rude and unkind behavior. I also have no problem calling out the behavior publicly if they post a negative review which has resulted in several removing their inaccurate portrayals of situations. 

I have Guest Rules posted which outline our expectations of how you treat the employees and our business, it has become necessary to reference when banning people who have become irrational or demanding. Examples include a woman threatening to sue us because we were closing and she wanted to stay longer, a woman angry that we didn't provide her with a real knife to cut her quiche since she's a chef, a customer telling my manager she can "go f*** yourself" when she asked how she could resolve a situation in which she was angry her food didn't come out fast enough (15 minutes), and many more.... All to say, I agree that we teach our customers how to treat us, we happen to have a very community feel local coffee shop and have so many amazing customers, but unfortunately some tend to get too familiar and think they are entitled to anything at any time and we have to create boundaries for the sake of our crew who work really hard. 

[Hailey]

OMG @fsalazar those examples.... I am so sorry all of those happened to you and your team 😫

[JUYBoutique20]

I do feel like the food industry gets a lot of the rude & nasty customers more often.  So sorry you've had to deal with those examples you shared.

[doc_choc]

Frustrations are one thing but nasty, rude communications are another. When the red mist descends sometimes very little can be done to resolve the issue but these thoughts may help. A timely responses are a must, frustrated customers don't like to be left festering. An understanding of their issue without being condescending helps. At this point what you think is probably best kept to oneself. Listen and let them talk without butting in. Diffuse the situation and find some amicable common ground. Not always easy but giving way to them a little will probably help the situation enormously.