Chapter 25
 Handling Clients or Customers

Of all the people you encounter in life, your clients or customers are arguably some of the most important. After all, they’re the ones who pay you. To keep your relationships vibrant and long-term, there are plenty of instances in which you need to be assertive. If the quality of your relationship has changed, and especially if it’s changed for the worse, being assertive is the order of the day. In this chapter, we’ll look at how to examine your relationships with your clients or customers to determine where and when assertiveness is desirable.

Customers Are King

Customers may not always be right, but they certainly do pay the bills. The renowned management consultant Dr. Peter Drunker observes “that of all the elements that make up a business, customers is the only one that is essential.” Whether you work with customers in a retail setting, or with clients providing some type of professional service, the fundamentals of effectively handling your patrons and being assertive are nearly the same.

Do You Care?

Perhaps the crucial element of interpersonal communication is conveying a sincere interest and appreciation for what the other person is telling you—in other words, to be concerned and interested with what the other party is saying. This is no easy feat.

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 Handle with Care
Checklists like the ones throughout this book can help you develop good listening skills. You can’t boil down the process of conveying real interest in what a customer is saying to a checklist, however. Your interest has to come from within. You can convey strong interest by offering your rapt attention, asking relevant questions at the appropriate junctures, and not jumping ahead of the customer.

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The Sound of My Own Name

Many advocates of good customer relations suggest using the customer’s name, either their first name, if you know them well enough to do so, or Mr. or Ms. in all other cases. This seems like a simple gesture, but it works. It offers the customer a form of personal recognition that helps put him or her more at ease.

Tell Me to My Face

In recent years, research has revealed that emulating a person’s communication pattern and body language in face-to-face encounters, or emulating their rate and pattern of speech over the phone, will enable you to quickly communicate with them efficiently and effectively. Dr. Donald J. Moine, a California-based psychologist who heads his own sales and management training firm, compared the sales techniques of high-achieving salespeople with those of mediocre salespeople. Moine found that top sales personnel use what he calls “hypnotic pacing” and instinctively match the customer’s voice tone, rhythm, volume, and speech rate. Career marketers take note!

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 Make It So
As hard as it is to remember, a person’s name is important to him. Using a person’s name is generally helpful in all encounters, but be sure that you don’t overuse it (dropping it into every other sentence).

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“The good salesman or saleswoman matches the customer’s posture, body language, and mood,” explains Moine. “If the customer is slightly depressed, the salesperson shares that feeling and acknowledges that he or she has been feeling a little down lately. In essence, the top sales producer becomes a sophisticated biofeedback mechanism, sharing and reflecting the customer’s reality—even to the point of breathing with the customer.”

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 Handle with Care
Hypnotic pacing helps establish trust and rapport. It does not work as a gesture, however. Anything other than an honest attempt to understand the other person and his or her frame of reference in a particular situation will be seen as mimicking, which will lessen trust.

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Once you’re able to get on the same communication wavelength, at least in terms of energy and rate of speech, you’ll be able to better tap in to the customer’s emotional state as well. Moine and others have then postulated that as you begin to build rapport you can change your rate of speech and mental state, such as going from placid to enthusiastic, and the customer may actually follow!

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 Make It So
For optimal assertiveness when speaking with a customer, telephoning a client, or even writing a letter, consider that person’s likely mood and reaction. What effect is your message likely to have? And how can you phrase that message for maximum benefit?

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Keeping Your Relationships Vibrant and Long-Term

Everyone wants to feel important. Everyone is tuned to the station WIIFM—What’s In It For Me. Hereafter, with customers or anyone else, you can accept as a given that when you convey through your words and action that you regard the other person as important, you’ve won a lot of points already when it comes to being heard, understood, and heeded.

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 Just the Facts
One of Dale Carnegie’s 21 rules in his legendary book How to Win Friends and Influence People is to “make the other person feel important.” The advice must be good—the book has sold more than 15 million copies during its 50-year run.

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Don’t Treat “A” Customers Like “D” Customers

One of the keys to customer service and, therefore, assertiveness, described in my book Marketing Your Consulting & Professional Services (Wiley, 1997), which I co-wrote with Richard Connor, is that you can’t be all things to all customers. A more viable strategy is to identify which customers are more important to your business or practice. An easy way to do this is to classify them. Classify your existing customers or clients by estimating their potential for providing you with business opportunities or problems that you can solve. Use an “A,” “B,” “C,” and “D” approach, as shown in the following table:

Characteristics of Customers or Clients

An “A” client is a key client. This type of client provides you with substantial revenue. This client may make referrals in your behalf, provide you with potential for additional services, and so forth.

Your “B” clients are your fair-to-good clients, who might be called your “bread-and-butter” clients. They pay their bills, make a few demands, and seldom provide you with additional service opportunities.

Your “C” clients are your marginal clients who fit one of two categories: (1) They constitute fee problems because they represent excessive discount situations or are slow payers; or (2) They make you vulnerable or upset with their actions because they give you or your staff a hard time.

Your “D” clients must be dropped immediately. “D” clients routinely ask you to compromise your standards or ethics. These are clients you wish you’d never met.

Since “A” clients are more valuable to your firm, and you can talk with them more easily, you may wish to go out of your way to meet their needs. With “B” clients you may feel a little less so, and so on. With “D” clients, collect whatever they owe you and then bow out. (Chapter 26 is all about collections!)

What Is Your Quality of Relationship?

In general, if you think there is a problem with a client or customer, there most assuredly is. Suppose you created a grid of your clients and ranked them according to how strong your relationship is with them? Five is a great relationship, and one is the pits. If you plotted your quality of relationships, or QORs, with seven “A” or “B” customers and subjectively determined that these were the scores, how might you choose to strengthen each relationship? (Remember, it’s easier to be assertive with people you know and like.)

Generally you would have good relationships with your “A” and “B” clients and poorer relationships with your “C” and “D” clients. But even among “A” and “B” clients there may be strong potential for better relations.

Potential answers are located in the Strategy column.

As you review your list and plot your strategy with each key customer or client, consider these questions:

1. How many relationships such as attorneys and bankers do I have in each category?
   
2. Among those with a QOR of 5, what makes these particular relationships strong?
   
3. How frequently do I contact these people to thank them for their efforts and seek additional leads?
   
4. How frequently do I reciprocate by making appropriate referrals to them?

The Customer Service Blues

It will happen. Some customer decides to let you have it, and offers a stinging barrage of verbal attacks or criticism. Should you let him have it right back? Maybe, but not usually, especially if it’s an “A” or “B” customer.

Let’s take a look at some assertiveness strategies under various troubling scenarios, regardless of what type of client is involved.

When a Customer Criticizes You

There’s an old saying that goes, “It is easy to avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” Since you don’t have those options, you need to have some strategies and specific language you can use when confronted by criticism, particularly unfair criticism.

Television correspondent Barbara Walters, who obviously has the gift of gab, once handled criticism in a way that was so effective I never forgot it. She was co-hosting with Harry Reasoner on the ABC Evening News in the early 1980s. This was the first time a woman had ever been an anchor or co-anchor for a major network’s nightly news. If you were around back then it’s not likely you recall ever seeing her on the news, because the job ended abruptly.

Walters and Reasoner were replaced by a single anchor, Patrick Reynolds. One evening while being interviewed as to why the ratings were so low, and whether the higher-ups at ABC were unhappy with her performance, Walters looked directly at her interviewer and said in a soft, low, but nevertheless commanding voice, “I guess I’m a pretty easy target these days.”

Her response much disarmed the interviewer and if he had any other tough questions to bring up, apparently he let them slide. When you’re besieged with criticism, sometimes the best response is to just say “Okay, hit me some more, everybody else is doing it” or something to that effect. If you want to disarm a customer in seconds, try this:

“You’re the 8th (or whatever number is applicable) person who has strongly voiced the same concern this very day. Apparently, we messed up big time, and we’re going to listen to all criticisms carefully so that we can devise the best resolution.”

Thereafter, what reasonably fair-minded person could continue the same level of attack?

A Strategy for Diffusing Hostility

The next time you’re criticized by a customer, remember these other ways to stand your ground and avoid blowing your stack:

1. Listen carefully for any shreds of wisdom that are helpful to you. Even in the most vitriolic attacks there may be some grain of truth. However personal the attack may be, try not to take it personally. Try to remember that it’s based on something your company has done or behavior you’ve exhibited, and generally not on you as a person. (Of course, if someone is attacking you as a person and trying to diminish the very root of your being, that’s another story!)
   
2. Understand that nearly all criticism is subjective. Someone who says you did a crummy job is voicing his opinion. You might actually have done some aspects of the job quite well. However, the customer’s perception, to him, is EVERYTHING! Also, recognize that there probably are times when you have done a crummy job.
   
3. If you can, let the customer finish. The temptation is to try to cut them off, but this only fans the flames.
   
4. When the customer is finished, try to respond graciously. If you can’t say something that’s reasonably pleasant, at least say something that’s not derogatory or belligerent; for example, “Thank you for expressing your concerns.”

Righting Wrongs

Suppose the customer is making an honest attempt to rectify what he sees as a grievous wrong. How might you receive such input?

1. Receive it like a champ. Look for the good in whatever the other person is saying. Avoid attempting to read between the lines. Don’t add meaning or implications where none were intended. Offer signs that you are listening: Nod your head on occasion, maintain at least occasional eye contact, and give the other party some respect.
   
2. Respond as appropriate. If you have to, ask questions or seek added information. Maybe it’s not as bad as it first sounded. Maybe the customer has some ideas or recommendations that will readily improve the situation.
   
3. If you intend to act on anything that you’ve heard, let the customer know.
   
4. If they’re in a position to help you, ask for help. After all, if they understand the situation so astutely, they may have viable answers.

Better Left Unsaid or Undone

Here’s a list of some things that you should avoid when faced with an angry customer.

1. Unless (and usually even if) you have compelling information, don’t attempt to play point-counterpoint with a customer. If you need to rebut some of what’s said, pick the most important or compelling issue and stay with that.
   
2. Don’t offer your own list of criticisms of the customer in response. This isn’t the issue, and it never helps.

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    Make It So
   Assertive professionals develop good listening skills even if what they’re hearing isn’t necessarily pleasing to them. The venting of an angry customer will end, and you will have to seek resolution.

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3. Don’t shuffle your feet, fidget, turn away, or make like you can’t wait for the customer to stop, even though that’s how you really feel.

What Customers Want to Hear

After venting their spleens, irate customers basically want to know they won’t get taken, that resolution is around the corner, and that you or your company acknowledges the legitimacy of the claim. So, be the big person that you are:

1. Take personal responsibility for resolution. “The ball’s in my court, and I’ll handle it.”
   
2. Express regret over the situation. Note that I said regret, not sorrow or apology. It isn’t always necessary for you to be apologetic. It is appropriate for you to regret whatever happened. This isn’t skirting the issue, it’s just using the most appropriate language for the situation.
   
3. State what you will do. “In order to alleviate this situation I intend to . . .”
   
4. Thank the customer for raising this issue. Again, this might be hard for you to do, but if you want to be professionally assertive, you also need to be professionally gracious. By that I mean that if somebody comes to you and presents a situation that perhaps was not easy for them to bring up, acknowledge them for bringing it up.

I’m Worthy—You’re Worthy

A friend of mine created an affirmation that she uses almost every day, particularly in situations in which she otherwise might feel a lack of confidence. The affirmation works well when dealing with customers, whether you’re calling on them as part of a sales campaign, handling their complaints, and everything in between.

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 Handle with Care
Everyone is “incomplete” in one aspect or another. That, however, has nothing to do with your ability to feel complete. They are two separate notions. You’d have to be a perfect human being to be complete in all aspects of your life. So far, humankind hasn’t produced anyone who fits that description. When you choose to feel complete, you automatically move in that direction. It’s a wonderful process.

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The affirmation is: “I choose to easily feel worthy and complete.” Why this wording? By choosing to feel worthy, she’s engaging in positive self-talk, which essentially says, “I am up to the challenge. No one else’s experience, education, wealth, title, or position need intimidate me. I can hold my own with others. Moreover, I’m a worthy human being, just for being here. I don’t have to go out of my way to prove myself; my worth is apparent.”

This is a vital concept because if you feel incomplete, as if you lack something that’s perpetually out of your grasp, you’re not going to be assertive in the face of challenges related to customers.

Walk a Mile in These Spats

You can always rely on the time-honored notion of putting yourself in another person’s moccasins. If you and an unhappy customer or client were to switch places, how would you like to be spoken to?

• What type of language would have the greatest impact on you?
  
• What tone of voice would be most effective?
  
• How would you like a situation to be approached?
  
• How would you like to be reminded to do something when, indeed, you need to be reminded?
  
• What facial expressions would appeal to you the most when someone makes a request?

The Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” or the Platinum Rule, “Do unto others as they would like to have done unto them” as described in Dr. Tony Alessandra’s book, The Platinum Rule, work exceedingly well with customers. Put these Rules to use with someone the next time you feel challenged.

A Divine Alternative

Suppose you work in customer service and encounter someone who is giving you an exceedingly hard time. Consultant and professional speaker David Eastman suggests an approach that makes sense. “Instead of marshaling my energy to stand strong against opposing forces, I attempt to assertively use the energy of the other to find mutual solutions. First and foremost, this means that I have to see the divine in the other person, even if they’re being a jerk!”

At the Conference of World Religions in Chicago way back in 1896, Swami Vivekananda advised attempting to see the divine in everyone. You don’t have to be religious in any formal sense to respond openly and assertively to others. Indeed, to be strong, calm, and assertive, Eastman suggests that you attempt to see the divine in yourself as well as in others.

“Neither they nor I take precedence,” Eastman says. “It’s akin to Dr. Stephen Covey’s definition of maturity, which is the balance of courage and consideration—‘courage to speak the truth as I know it, and the consideration to be open to hearing and acting upon the other person’s truth as well.’ ”

From this perspective, assertiveness is about clarity of purpose. It’s amazing how well this approach to assertiveness works. It saves hurt feelings, energy, and reliance on any methodology or technique.

With Malice Toward None

Dave Yoho, a Fairfax, Virginia-based consultant to businesses worldwide and a renowned platform speaker, tells a tale about Alice Martin that contains a lesson for everyone. Alice is a customer service representative in the auto parts department of a large, metropolitan store. She is skilled in using assertive language.

One day, as Dave tells it, she receives a phone call from an irate customer who is seeking to exchange an expensive set of custom wheels; he’s been back to the store twice already, and the latest set contains blemishes. While the customer is shouting and using vile language, Alice gets the necessary information to solve the problem. The customer, growing more impatient, eventually explodes.

“Lady,” he screams, “you can take these wheels and shove ’em up your . . .” The remarks were uncalled for and in bad taste, but Alice keeps her cool.

Calmly she replies, “Sir, I appreciate your offer, but I’m already dealing with a stereo radio and set of hubcaps that were directed to the same part of my anatomy yesterday.” Then she pauses.

The customer cannot believe his ears. He pauses, asks her name, and within 40 minutes is standing at her counter laughing. The wheels are exchanged and his problem is solved.

Alice retains a customer for her company—perhaps for YEARS—because of her assertive, effective language skills!