A colleague asked me why “grown folk” throw full blown temper tantrums when you don’t jump to do their bidding. She asked me if I knew a quick, fast and easy way to deal with difficult people. I chuckled because it truly is fascinating to observe people and their personalities. I am constantly surprised at how many adults will throw a toddler style temper tantrum in a hot minute. Allow me to share a quick example to illustrate my solution.
Many years ago I worked for Samsung Customer Service. During my days as a customer representative, people would call us and then absolutely throw a fit when you didn’t do whatever it is that they wanted you to do. They would scream, yell, and curse. Some wanted to exchange the device, some wanted you to refund and some wanted you to force an engineer to reschedule so they could get their device fixed ASAP at their convenience. What was shocking is that the people who do this are not “children”, they are “grown folk”, meaning someone over the age of 40!
I remember one time this elderly gentleman trying to get refund, yelling at me. The moment that he was told that he would be unable to get refund because it was his fault, not ours, he screamed quite aggressively and yelled at the top of his lungs, and demanding to speak to a supervisor on the phone. I sent him over to my supervisor because I loved to watch her “conflict resolution skills” in action.
She took a deep breath and said “Yes Sir, how may I help you?” He then went into a tirade about how we were wasting his time when we could be sending him over to the supervisor. She expressed that all customer representatives have protocols to follow prior to sending over customers to me. He then threw bad words over the phone and demanded to get refund since we were so unhelpful.
She looked at his information about the TV he got, and shared that although his situation was NOT suitable for getting refund, this was unacceptable to him and he once again started yelling. She smiled stopped him cold in his tracks, and said in a low voice “You know, when I was a child, there was a thing called ‘shame’ and we were too embarrassed to behave in such a manner, publicly or privately. I am trying to help you out and I’m stunned that you keep yelling at me when your anger has nothing to do with us, you just broke your device with your inappropriate usage, and you are behaving in this manner”. He became pretty quiet and replied “Well I was taught that the squeaky wheel gets the grease!” She laughed and relied “I was taught NEVER to reward ‘bad-behavior and /or temper tantrums’. Thank goodness he also laughed. You see, I was in my early twenties and he was in his seventies. Needless to say, he took his “act right” medication, accepted our offer and sent an engineer over to his place to get it fixed properly.
You might be thinking about now “What in the world does this have to do specifically with me – an author, coach, consultant, speaker or trainer – when I have to deal with difficult people?” This is a great question and my answer is “everything”. If you “give away the store” simply because you lack conflict resolution skills, you will find yourself in the shoes of my colleague, filled with anger, rage, bitterness and resentment whenever people show up in tantrum mode. When you are self-employed, there are not thousands of people standing between you and the direct customer. You must learn how to say no to high maintenance, high drama people. The simple, fast and in a hurry answer is this "Put your big girl panties on and develop protocols for handling irate customers". You will not be in business very long if you give into every customer demand. It doesn’t matter whether you are a big or small business, you must take the time to develop customer service protocols.
How do you deal with people in challenging situations? What has worked well for you in the past? How do you remain calm when a person is yelling, screaming and cursing at you?
