Wednesday, May 13, 2015

The Management Tip of the Day from Harvard Business Review

  HBR Management Tip of the Day - Harvard Business Review

May 13, 2015

Train Employees on How to Handle Abusive Customers


Sometimes the customer is not always right. Certain customers – whether they’re unforgiving, obnoxious, or overly needy – can hurt employee morale, put your company’s reputation at risk, and prove too costly to serve. It’s important to clearly define your ideal and non-ideal customer, and then train employees on how to deal with the latter. They are, after all, your company’s frontline eyes and ears – they must decide which customers are worth working with and which are not. Companies often don’t conduct special training to handle entitled and abusive customers, leaving employees to improvise. If they’re operating under the cliché of “the customer is king” and trying endlessly to please every whim, it can hurt your bottom line. Provide support by explaining what problematic customer behaviors to look out for and establishing a process for how to respond. This will help them be able to make more effective on-the-spot decisions.

Adapted from “When and Why to Part Ways with a Customer” by Lior Arussy.







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