It’s not easy to stay cool under pressure. It is especially difficult when you deal with demanding clients who don’t understand your processes, policies or guidelines. So having the patience of a saint makes for great customer service delivery overall and especially with difficult clients. A colleague recently shared the following story of a real estate client who demanded much but understood little.
Real World Story: “My friend Teddy has been looking to buy a home. Because I’ve completed a couple of real estate transactions in the past when I was looking for a condo and then a home, he asked if I would go with him and his real estate agent on a tour of a few houses. I know that Teddy is a difficult person for professional service providers to deal with, but I agreed to help out and hoped I wouldn’t regret it later. And although Teddy was true to form, I did learn from his real estate agent, Richard, a thing or two about what makes great customer service when dealing with difficult clients.
“Teddy scheduled a tour with his real estate agent, Richard, of available homes that Teddy wanted to see on a Saturday morning. Richard was to pick us up at 10am. When the agent arrived promptly at 10am, he pulled out his list of 22 homes that Teddy wanted to see. Yes, I am not exaggerating—22 homes! AND they were NOT in one focused area; the tour was for homes in a 20-square-mile area of Los Angeles County, encompassing seven different cities. As I’ve already mentioned, Teddy makes for a difficult client!
“Unfortunately, 22 homes was not enough for Teddy. While Richard drove us around from house to house, Teddy was glued to a real estate app on his phone. Every time a newly listed home popped up, he would tell Richard that he wanted to see it ‘since we were already out.’
“Richard explained: ‘Keep in mind that just because a new listing pops up, it doesn’t mean it is available to see immediately. I need to contact the selling agent to make an appointment. And that usually takes a day or two, especially on weekends. And then I have to coordinate our arrival to get the access code to enter the home, depending on the type of lockbox being used. It’s a bit of a lengthy process, so maybe we start a new list of homes to see at a later date,’ Richard explained.
“At one point in our homes tour, Teddy asked Richard how he could buy a home in a higher price range than his lender had already pre-qualified him for because the homes we were seeing were not move-in ready and needed a lot of work. Richard said, ‘Based on what your lender has shared with me, you would need to add the difference between your loan and the selling price to your down payment.’ Teddy didn’t understand what that meant and became visibly frustrated. Richard then said, ‘Your loan is for $600K. If you were to purchase a home selling for $625K, you would need to increase your down payment by an additional $25K because you can’t borrow more than what you qualify for.’ Teddy still didn’t understand what Richard was explaining, so Teddy became even more agitated. Richard then finally said, ‘Look at it this way. If a friend asked you to loan him $1,000 and would put up his vintage comic book as collateral, which was worth $700, and he then did not pay you back, he would give you the comic book. But you would be left with minus $300. You simply loaned him more money than he qualified for. You risked a higher loss. It’s the same for a lender who would be left with a larger uncollected debt if you were to default on your loan.’ That, Teddy understood—finally.
“During this very, very long tour of homes, I thought to myself, Man, this agent has the patience of a saint! There is no way I would show anyone more than 4 or 5 homes at a time. And how he explains himself and in different ways is refreshing to hear, instead of him simply saying no or repeating himself as most people often do out of frustration.
“Luckily for everyone, Teddy found a home that he qualified for and is moving in during the first week of next month. Can’t wait to see how the movers deal with Teddy : )”
Strategies that Turn it Around:
- Don’t say no, instead explain the process. Customers don’t always know what happens behind the scenes. That’s why it is important to clearly explain a process, so customers know what to expect. Many bad customer interactions are the result of unmet expectations.
- Don’t repeat yourself, instead explain in different ways. When you explain something to a customer, and he or she is not understanding what you are getting at, then explain the situation in a different way. Don’t simply repeat yourself. Repeating yourself will only anger your customers because they’ve already said they don’t understand what you are saying. If you’ve already explained something the same way two or three times, what makes you think saying the same exact thing a fourth or fifth time would make a difference?
- Keep cool and keep it together. Patience, Grasshopper. That is the key. No pun intended.
Remember: Working with difficult clients is a fact we can’t get away from. But dealing with such clients’ demands doesn’t have to be a nightmare. Dealing with them is a form of customer service art. By explaining our processes and by explaining issues in different ways so clients understand us, we show clients that we have their best interest at heart and that we’re working with them, not against them.
How does your organization handle difficult clients?