Introduction to Difficult People

Now I have to be quite clear here that difficult people are the minority.

You’ll get them but there not everyone. There are people that no matter what you do, you’ll never ever satisfy them and they’re the minority. In the main people who show difficult behaviour, have usually got a reason for it. And it’s up to you professionals, to be very calm, and deal with those people and try and understand where the problem is with the other person. As far as communicating with them within the workplace is concerned.

These are the objectives of article.

• We will learn how to prevent escalation. It’s what you do in that interaction that can actually keep it at the level it is and prevent the escalation. So it’s our job to manage that escalation. We need to keep it as it is or reduce it, not encourage the difficult behaviour.
• We will talk about how people’s mind are affected when they’re actually displaying difficult behaviours. There will be some simple tips for building connections with your clients and customers.
• Questioning techniques is a brilliant thing to learn. Because asking the right questions can calm people down. Asking the right questions can actually make people resort to another place in their mind so they can give you an answer and respond positively. So questioning tactics are great.
• We’ll use that in our dialogue when we’re actually talking to people using tone for influence, there’s lots of different tones we can use. It’s what you say and how you say it. So tone has a big influence on our communication skills. We’ll talk about body language. We have innate talents in ourselves that we can recognise body language and other people. And we tune into that with our intuition.
• Another technique we will talk about is Self talk, because it’s how you talk to yourself as to how you’re going to react, and it changes our your own body language. So it’s two parts.
• Changing experiences for customers we want every customer to have a good experience with your company. So we’ll look at how we can actually change it from a poor experience to a really good experience. Helping them to reach conclusions with communication techniques. 99% of conflict can be diluted by communication. So communication spends a big part of the learning in todays article.

Why do you think your customers can be difficult or show some difficult behaviour?

There may be many different reasons why someone may become difficult or show this type of behaviour. Here are a list of the main reasons below:

• People empower them. In other words, they allow them to do it becomes acceptable behaviour.  We have to let people have a voice, and we need to listen to them when they’re having that. However, some people don’t call out bad behaviour which enables it. Customers can also learn by getting loud they get served quicker. So its hard to solve the issue, without enabling the customer to win much of the argument.
• If you didn’t get what you paid for would be another good reason to get upset or if it wasn’t at the standard that you expected when you get upset.
• Customers may feel unsatisfied and unwanted.  They want someone to be held accountable and that’s usually not them.  Some customers are generally unhappy.
• They have truly had a bad experience and want a resolution. If you get one bad experience in a company, you will then expect it from another person also. So, people will be sometimes on the defensive and it’s got nothing to do with you. It’s something to do with the experience they’ve had before.
• Many customers feel the rules don’t apply to them. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen people go through a doorway. It says no entry, because it just doesn’t apply to them. They feel restricted with policies and don’t believe in them. People don’t like policies been thrown at them. They don’t like the rules and regulations. However, every company has rules and regulations. It’s how we put that to the customer.
• They may just be having a bad day. Even before entering the premises. You don’t know what people are going through before they walk through your door.
• Behavioural personality disorders and mental health are both areas where customers can be classed as difficult. The reason why is we just don’t understand it enough and we think its just them being difficult but it could be something deeper.
• We’re not psychologists, or psychiatrists so we would not expect you to deal with those people in being a professional counsellor. What we do is we look at what they’re actually doing and before we do anything, we have to protect ourselves from any physical violence.
• Then there is alcohol and addiction. Making sure that the people if there’s any around us, that we protect them and also ourselves. Sometimes, there’s no heroes in our business. We have to get out and do something. It could even be walking away or leaving the venue.

Setting expectations is important

To prevent things situations we need to actually be proactive in setting those expectations and boundaries in order that people need to know before they go into your establishment, what the boundaries are and the expectations of doing business with you. Providing your customers details about your process and policies will actually avoid that and you can refer to them when the time is right.

First impressions are lasting.

You always remember your first impression. You can change them. When somebody comes into your establishment, they’re going to lock eyes with you and they’re going to make a first impression. You’re going to make a first impression of them too. And that’s our assessment part. We assess who’s walking into our areas and if we can maximise that first impression it will be a better interaction all round. If somebody walks in they’re angry, what you have to do is first tell yourself,  “this person’s angry”, and then you make some adjustments internally straightaway. That’s when you start the first impression.

Often a friendly approach, having assistants and staff welcoming customers. You want the positive interaction and that’s where you start to build the relationship with the person that first walks in.

Quickly build rapport. For example: When you walk into a shop as you’ve got other people around, you acknowledge the smile of the cashier and you acknowledge them. And then you know, they don’t feel like they’re pressured to come and see you straight away. If that’s the only person there then you have an interaction with them straightaway, but clear and positive communication starts of the relationship and interaction.

Techniques for Managing Difficult Behaviours

When people are upset, they raise their voice.

When people are in control of a conversation they talk at normal voice. So if somebody’s raising their voice, you will want to lower your tone if you can as that brings people down to a more controlled level. Naturally they will want to mirror your behaviour so using mirroring techniques are a great way to take control of the situation.

Personally I have used to do that when I was in charge of a call center. If I had to have a conversation with somebody that was really upset on the phone, I lower my voice. People take notice and listen to you when you lower your voice. It shows the other person that you really want to work things out and that you’re not getting upset about it. You’re in problem solving mode.

Read the room.

Reading the room you set your foundation up and see what’s going on. It’s up to you to read the body language of the other people pick up the scenes by reading the room. This can help you work our the behavioural temperature of the room. For example: If somebody has been really ice cold and you need to warm them up or if they’re being red hot, you need to cool them down. So reading the room is when you see doubt, add evidence. When you see non active or negative body language. Ask for opinions and test the room.

Use the customer’s name if you can.

Using their names actually calms people down as its something they recognise and an anchor to them.

For example: Somebody walks in they might not even introduce themselves or be upset about something. You can say “can I can I ask your name so I can assist you” And then you use their name and then it personalises the conversation and calms people down. If you say it three times in a conversation when someone is ranting at you, it can help them pause and listen. This is due to some behavioural programming when we were children. Some of our parents used our name to scold us or to get our attention when we were misbehaving. The programming is still in there so it is helpful for people who wont let you speak or continue their poor behaviour.

Give respect to personal space, including yours as well.

This is how people become intimidated in the invasion of personal space. Be very careful about space between you and the other person. I usually have an arm’s length rule. Especially so that the can’t suddenly jump out and just attack you. You’ve got some space between you for those quick reactions.

Be aware of your posture.

This is important as they’re reading your body language signals. They’re not necessarily listening to what you’re saying but they’re definitely looking at how you’re actually positioning yourself using non threatening non verbals.

Correctly reply in regard to emotions.

Some people struggle to identify how they feel about the world around them. Listen carefully to the person’s true message. What you’ve got to do when they’re explaining is to acknowledge their feelings.

The main reasons why we acknowledge their feelings is that we never should say “I can see that you’re upset” or “I can see that you’re angry” as you maybe increasing the emotion and changing it for the client (Making it worse). The best statement to make here is “I understand how you feel” which acknowledges their feelings but doesn’t label it into something else.  If you acknowledge feelings that way, they won’t feel the need to keep proving it to you. It also covers a broad range of emotions which means you always hit the mark correctly.

The minute you acknowledge their feelings, the message that they’re trying to deliver to you is being understood. So therefore hopefully they’re going to get a little bit calmer.  Don’t ask challenging questions, or to be too cool for questions.

Deciding what rules can be negotiated, which cannot is important to think carefully.

If a person doesn’t like to respond to you, Change the form or communication to the most convenient?  The use of silence can also be useful. It makes the other people think if you can get some silence in there they can then have more time to make decisions. You are relieving the pressure of time constraints. Sometimes they’re not in the mindset to make decisions. So giving it a little bit of a space there is good and it’s also good for you and your stress levels.

Planning your strategy

Eventually the best cure is if we can prevent conflict from happening, prevent some misunderstandings. That’s a better approach because you’re going to have the best chance to state boundaries as soon as appropriate. So you got to decide when it’s appropriate to say that.

Become familiar with emotional intelligence.

It means that you read your own triggers makes you upset and you can control them. You can calm yourself down and bring yourself back to a neutral position.

If you don’t use that, then you’re going to be on the defensive you’re going to be trying to defend yourself. And that’s not where you should be in an interaction like that.

Preventing conflict comes down to stating boundaries where appropriate.

Find a way to connect with the customer build rapport. I mean, this is what customer service is all about. You do this anyway. People like to do business with people that are friendly, so building that rapport is absolutely paramount.

We’re going to talk about directing the customer to other processes. Focus on the reason why they’re there on the phone, providing alternative options, instead of leading a customer to a brick wall. Like saying there’s nothing else I can do for them really is leading them to a brick wall. So never lead a customer if you can, to a dead end. There’s always something else they can do. They can write in their complaint or they can talk to someone else such as a manager or supervisor. That way, at least they leave with some hope of or getting some resolution from someone.

Closing with positivity is where you restate the main point of your conversation, especially on the phone. You know if you’ve had a long drawn out conversation, recap on it, summarise it. Help the client see where the agreement is.

Thank them for responding, respecting the decisions. If you’ve got them to a place where you can talk to them  you can actually thank them for their cooperation.

Self talk is the way that you build up confidence by using internal dialogue. You can calm yourself down by self talk and if you are clever enough to use questions, it can help direct the conversation and help the customer use self talk also.

Self talk never shuts up. It’s your voice in your head. And you can either be your worst enemy, or you can be your best friend. You may have heard many positive affirmation statements such as “If you think you can, then you will.”  When you’re in a tricky situation it is important to use self talk and calm yourself down.

When you actually talk to yourself, it’s a way of really making yourself a little bit more comfortable with the situation.

See part two for the continued article here.