Abusive Customers Cause Emotions Run High

Abusive Customers Cause Emotions Run High

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Abusive Customers Cause Emotions Run High

Dealing with customers, especially of late, has had its ups and downs. This is one of the jobs which can mess up a person’s emotional stability in a horrible manner since customer service involved dealing with all types of people as long as they are customers. This exposes a person to kind, humble, angry, irritated, and other categories of people who never allow the customer care even to talk or express the company’s stand. Some of these customers can be humiliating to think of and more so to deal with. Therefore, customer care service providers must always be prepared for anything and not always take what is said to them personally. The challenge of dealing with customers who are not considerate also comes with the burden of preparing for emotional “dryness” or merely the inability of a person to be adversely affected by what they are told. Therefore herein discussed is how dealing with an abusive customer leads to burnout and stress, personalities best acquainted with the ability to handle any customer, and the role of emotional intelligence when it comes to dealing with customers (Cook, 2010). 

Stress and burnout are everyday experiences of many people since almost everyone gets tired at some point in their lives. The stress of knowing that a person has to get back to the same kind of job daily and to go and deal with a particular person or people be it, customers, work-mates or boss, can cause a lot of emotional instability since a person keeps on thinking the worst that can happen and this never makes them do their job in the right manner. This stress ad burnout is even more critical to the individuals responsible for operating at the customer service desk in any company or organization. This is because people have different tissues which they go through every day, and life to the customer service providers becomes a mixture of every kind of person. The customer service providers experience the challenge of abusive language from the customer to the customer service agents. This is never seen as a good thing but rather as a way of being rude. (Cook, 2010). 

However, since the companies and organizations do not exist for the emotional, behavioral, and spiritual direction of a person’s life, it becomes tough to help some of their clients because of emotional instability and their issues which they amplify to the companies even for the smallest mistake done by the company or organization. This makes it very difficult not only for the company but especially for the customer care who receives this. Therefore, it is always essential for a company to train their customer service members on how they can do away with this issue of getting emotionally frustrated and how to channel these bitter feelings and anger caused by clients and customers.

Therefore it is true that dealing with abusive customers can lead to burnout and stress. Stress in the first place comes up with trying to please the customer who is not willing to be pleased and who is not willing to listen to the situation as it is. Therefore this already makes the customer service provider stressed about how he/she can put it for the customer to understand. This mostly happens when customers call to complain and give out their problems about a specific issue they do not like about that particular company or organization. This makes life difficult for the customer service providers and makes it at times unbearable as the customer service providers get too much emotional luggage they have to deal with. It is even made more difficult because most businesses value their customers and clients more than their employees. Therefore the customer care has to make sure that they accommodate and never show emotional anger or dislike.

This, even though intended for the company to retain its customers, brings a lot of emotional damage to the employees, especially the customer care people. From the continuous streams of stress, the customer acre personnel develops burnout as they do not have a way to deal with what they are going through. This is one of the undesired effects of working as a customer service personnel.

The difference in people’s behaviors and traits makes it difficult or easy for them to be indifferent to situations, some of which are viewed as challenging and others viewed as suitable for anyone. Therefore it also follows that some individuals fit best for a customer service provision than others. These differences come in from their personalities or experiences. A job of a customer service call center requires a person who can redirect his anger and thoughts and the anger and frustration that come along with the clients positively and make sure that it does not affect him or her negatively. Therefore, if I were the hiring human resource manager at a call center, I would mainly check a person’s personality and traits and how much they can withstand emotional frustration.

Testing the potential candidates is one of the things that can be of great importance in determining who qualifies. From a general perspective, an agent of a customer service call center should overcome the emotional baggage thrown at them. Apart from this, there are also other qualities and peculiarities which I would look into. These include such as their ability to solve problems creatively, empathy, their proper organization, calm under pressure, good memory, optimism, team player among other factors which would make the customer service call center a very efficient place not only for the customers but also for the other colleagues and work-mates. The empathy of the one being employed should be used not only for the customers who call but also for the whole working environment. Therefore, this would bring unity and peace even among the employees.

Their ability to keep calm under pressure, optimism, good memory, and other factors that qualify them for the job also makes them worthy of making peace reign among the employees and everyone around them. Therefore hiring this kind of person becomes a very crucial asset to the company. Therefore I would dismiss those who lack the required qualities and allow those who can do the work to begin working. Through this, the call center would be the most favorite of all people, and it would also be respected (Hume, 2012).

Emotional intelligence is another quality that is very important in all aspects of a person’s life and, therefore, a very much needed aspect of dealing with abusive customers. Emotional intelligence means a person can put aside their emotions when dealing with the customer or rather be ready enough to face the customers from a very mature level whereby the customer is swayed back to what should be happening rather than beginning to talk with the same amount of anger which the customer uses. Therefore emotionally intelligent people remain calm and take time to think critically and respond to issues. This can help a lot in dealing with abusive customers. The nature of talking is that if a person is angry and I don’t get angry but rather keep calm and talk to them, I will make them calm. However, it is responding to a person with the same amount of anger which they use to attack me that means I would only accelerate and make the anger more and these areas always awkward instances whereby a customer and a customer care provider both are arguing over very few things which do not matter very much.

By emotional intelligence, a customer service provider can sense what the customer is feeling. Therefore, they try to bring in solutions to the customers because they know what they want from afar. Through this, an emotionally intelligent customer care agent will express empathy to the person going through an issue, and in this case, the person is the customer. Here, the apprehension skill can be stated to be handling other people’s emotions (Hume, 2012). Along with this other apprehension skills which are essential and which emotionally intelligent people use are; dealing with personal emotions more readily, ability to push forward in the face of setbacks, sensing what the others are feeling, etc. therefore, through these dimensions, an emotionally intelligent person can deal with the others around them and in this case to deal with customers and clients.

Therefore, in conclusion, I can say that it is true that the work of customer service is considered difficult by most people. However, suppose a person is ready to be formed on how to deal with and handle different people. In that case, this is an opportunity for a person to get to know how much they can be social and what that they can make the world a better place by utilizing their strengths and recognizing their weakness however never allowing themselves into them and therefore through this it becomes possible for achievement to be realized and in this case for customer service to be made better.

References

Cook, S. (2010). Customer care excellence: How to create a useful customer focus. Kogan page publishers.

Hirst, A., & Walther, A. (2002). Emotional intelligence the key to excellent customer care at Corus and Regal. Training & Management Development Methods, 16(2), 721-721.

Hume, D. (2012). Emotions and moods. Organizational behavior, 258-297.

Nikolaou, I., & Tsaousis, I. (2002). Emotional intelligence in the workplace: Exploring its effects on occupational stress and organizational commitment. The International Journal of Organizational Analysis.