Techniques for De-escalation

Don’t take it personally

You have to remember that it’s not personal. They’re also not angry at you, they’re angry at the situation.  People may try and make it personal but it’s not to do with you personally. It maybe something to do with a process, a situation or even the customer.

So use internal dialogue. That’s the voice in your head. Try and change the direction. Change perception. If you’re blaming yourself change that. Create new results and new emotions.

Thinking changes our results. Our bodies connected to our programming. We’re all programmed by our experiences and we have formed patterns. What we have to do is reprogram ourselves by thinking differently, to get different results. Look at the root causes of our results.

Use Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the ability to be aware of our emotions, being able to regulate our emotions and to look at other people’s emotions.

When we say something to somebody, there’s going to be reactive response. To get the right reaction we need to think about how we’re going to say what we day to get the right reaction, and that’s what we’re doing here. So by challenging our thinking process, changing our feeling which in turn changes our actions then helps us benefit and reach our result.

Lead towards a desired goal.

Using questions will help you have the client work through the solution with you. By using questions, you can ultimately help another person’s use their thought process while you’re doing this. What we can do with our customers is ask a series of questions that helps them to get to where you want them to go. You can use open questions and closed questions. So you can use your questions to lead into the goal. Tie Downs is a good way of doing it. For example: if you have a client complaining about something that their lawyers have said to them that’s in the contract, and then something happened and they ring you. You can’t say “well, you shouldn’t read your contract” or “it’s in the contract” What you can do is ask the client “did you get a contract?”  “Didn’t they legally take you through that? So leading up to letting them know they should have read the contract without the use of a statement.

When someone is irrational or on drugs

If you serve people who are on drugs there’s no pattern to their behaviour. They may be displaying signs of just being irrational. And when they’re like that, no system in the world is going to help them. You can’t even question them because they’re not going to come up with anything sensible. So again, what you’ve got to do a look after yourself. Give them distance. Be polite to them and if you’ve got a panic button, press it if the situation gets out of hand. If they come in lunge towards you, make sure you get out the way as quick as possible that’s what you have to do.

Take note of your own behaviour

Remain calm. Take a deep breath to relax and slide around any issue that may escalate the situation more. You may remember to that angry people, you can’t control a person and you can only control yourself and if you can’t control the situation if you’re upset yourself. No matter how outrageous your customers ranting may be, come look for a note any kernels of truth. If you stay silent is can help you unravel more.

Expressing Empathy

Always express empathy. Even though you know you’re not in that situation itself, you can understand what it must be like for them. Acknowledge and be careful apologising if there’s any litigation attached to it. I would apologise for something that you personally have done. But all the rest of times it will be acknowledging instead eg “I can understand it was a waiting period”. If there’s something that could actually snowball into something that was legal, make sure the apology is approved by management and rehearsed.