Sometimes a call with a customer doesn’t quite go to plan. Maybe you fumbled a sales call. Possibly your customer wasn’t in a good mood and was rude to you. Or perhaps something went wrong further along the chain and the customer was taking their frustration out on you.It’s okay to be upset in this situation. It’s a natural reaction, especially if it isn’t your fault. Nobody wants to feel like they’ve made a mistake and nobody wants to shoulder the blame.
But a bad call with a customer can set back your day – if you let it. So how can you get yourself back on track and ready to help the next customer that you speak to? There are two parts to this article. First, there are steps for trying to recover the customer who is still on the phone. If you can make things right, then you should. Second, there are steps for getting yourself back on track after a call that doesn’t go to plan.
How to recover the situation with the customer
#1 Try to salvage the customer call while you’re still on the phone
When a call starts to go wrong, you’ll sense that there’s a problem.
If you’ve done something wrong, then now is the time to acknowledge this mistake. Even if you’re not personally to blame, saying sorry signals to your customer that you know something has gone wrong. This doesn’t mean accepting liability; it’s just saying to your customer that you know they’re not happy.
This is the first step to help change the dynamic of the call and help you to recover the situation with the customer.
#2 Ask the customer what they would like to happen next
After you’ve reset the tone of the call, ask the customer what they’d like the next steps to be. Rather than putting forward your own solution, ask the customer what they would like to happen. This establishes a level of respect and empathy with the customer leading the conversation forward to find the right resolution.
How to recover after a call that doesn’t go to plan
#1 Get some distance from your desk
Recovering from a bad customer call is much easier if you give yourself a few minutes. Get up, take a short walk and make yourself a drink. By taking a bit of time, you can mentally reset and start again. That way, you’ll stop your frustration from creeping into your next call.
If you can’t get away from your desk straight away, take a couple of minutes to pause. Even simple steps, like closing your eyes and taking a few deep breaths, can be enough to make sure you’re ready to face your next call.
Of course, there is a caveat to all of this: it needs to be a short break to get you ready to speak to the next customer, not a distraction from work.
#2 Learn from your mistakes
When you have a few minutes, reflect again on the call. Don’t do this step straight away – you need to take some time for your mood to settle. When you feel relaxed, consider what happened on the call and try to step back and analyse what happened from an objective point of view.
Jot down a few notes on what went wrong. If possible, listen back to a recording to see if there is something else you could have said or done. Then, speak to your manager or mentor to work on steps for improving, ready for next time.
Mistakes will happen. What matters is how you recover from them. Turning a customer call that didn’t go to plan into a learning opportunity means you can improve in the future and look to recover future customer calls.
To help you motivate and keep your best agents on the frontline we collaborated with ContactBabel. We produced a report highlighting the most effective characteristics in the contact centre, using gamification to reward and the most effective techniques to engage your agents, check out the report below!
