5 Ways to Handle the Impolite Customer, Says Customer Service Speaker

When we think of delivering excellent customer service we usually think by doing so we are paying a kindness to customers and to ourselves, as well as to our existing organizations.

That's true.

But it is also a way that we acknowledge and honor the founders of the enterprise, which have, through various generations entrusted their legacy to us.

Still in my teens, I worked in an experimental McDonald's unit named Ramond's, after founder Ray Kroc. The training was so complete that when I grilled a hamburger or cleaned a counter I felt I was emulating that giant of franchising, as I endeavored to do each task exactly as he would have done it.

When I was consulting at the Cambridge campus, Polaroid employees used to speak of their founder, Dr. Land, in reverential tones. He was the visionary behind instant photography, and his cameras shaped and captured history.

It is easy to feel alienated at work, just part of a behemoth, and a tiny one at that.

But I suggest you counter that impulse by "channeling" your company's founders. Try to connect to the essence that they brought to their work, a genuine thrill that they were being paid to offer value to customers.

Make that next customer experience exceptional for everyone. You just may find enough inspiration in it to induce you to launch your own new enterprise.

Which of course, may be a ticket to prosperity, but even more enduring, it could be a passage into perpetuity. You've heard the clichés: What goes around comes around, and when you lie down with dogs, you get fleas.

These adages remind us that causes have effects, and we need to choose our associations with care, including our customers, whenever possible. Or we could be vexed by an itch we can't quite scratch, that will not go away by itself.

Impolite customers are a particular problem, because they're insulting. Who wants to feel demeaned at work? Yet at the same time, as the ancient book of wisdom, The Tao teaches:

"What is a good man but a bad man's teacher? What is a bad man but a good man's work?"

Here are 5 tips for dealing with impolite customers:

(1) I conducted a seminar in which I had to deal with a person that asked rude questions, one after the next, questions that were really impossible to answer.

"Do you teach another seminar on this subject without so many personal examples?" was one of her queries. Where do you even begin to reply to this type of imbedded criticism?

I saw this grenade, and I lobbed it away: "No, this is the only seminar I'm presenting at this point." And I carried on with my next personal example, exactly as I had planned.

(Aristotle suggested using examples more than precepts if you want to optimize teaching and learning.)

Which happens to be the first tip I'd like to share: If you hear a rude question, separate it into a part you can answer and a part you will not answer, which you will ignore. I answered the part that asked: "Do you have another seminar?"

(2) Realize YOU are not the problem. customer service tips