Working With Difficult Clients? Use These 6 Tips To Deal With The Situation
- Oyinlola
- September 23, 2019
- Living
- dealing with difficult clients, How to deal with difficult clients, improve your relationship with clients that are difficult, improving your career, Manage difficult clients, working with difficult clients
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You know that moment when you want to scream but you know you can’t because the object of your frustration is right in front of you?
It’s understandable that you would want to consider that you have to deal with a client who not only infuriates you, also wants to make you rethink your line of work.
Be it customer service, your own business, or you’re running a business for someone, you will always have to deal with clients that will be difficult to handle.
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‘A customer is King’ they say, but so also are the people attending to them. So what do you do when you have rude, nagging, picky, and hard to please clients?
Learn from these 6 tips on how to deal with difficult clients.
1. Choose Your Words Carefully
This will determine the beginning and end of your deal with a client. You have to choose words that would make him\her understand. Use simple terms or relate what you are doing with general facts and terms. When you talk in your professional jargon, try to explain in layman terms, because misunderstanding is the beginning of a quarrel.
2. Document Your Interactions With Your Client
This is necessary especially if you are in a continuous business relationship. If you are a makeup artist for example, and your well-known client promises to settle her debt with you before her next appointment, document it. This will give you an advantage. It won’t become an ‘it’s your word against mine’ kind of situation. There are also some clients that have the habit of forgetting things discussed or agreements made between you two. Make sure you document your transactions to serve as a reminder. Not everyone accepts their flaw in front of others.
3. Try To Keep Calm
There are always customers or clients who are spoiling for a fight, try not to get caught. If you are truly blameless, keep your calm and try to explain from an objective point of view. If you raise your voice along with you the issue wouldn’t be resolved with ease.
4. Try To Under-Promise When Not Sure Of Delivery
There are some clients who ask you for a mountain in their living room when they know it’s not possible. Try to avoid saying yes to those kinds of requests. It’s best to under-promise that over-promise when you can’t deliver. It’s best to exceed a low expectation than try to meet a high one. When you also under-promise, the client wouldn’t get angry when things don’t turn out as you wish. It is left to you to prove to your difficult clients that you can do it. That way you impress rather than disappoint.
5. Improve Your Approach With Them
Don’t Use words that sound patronizing to your clients. People like it when they are being paid full attention to, so interact with them like you would a family member. If they do act rude, they won’t lash out.
6. Avoid Them
This should be natural for you. You have to have the spirit of discernment to sight the ones that would be trouble. This should be second nature if you want to succeed in what you do. If you know you can’t handle the difficult ones, pass them on to redirect who can, but you must sharpen your skills.
