Different Types of Customers Your Support Team Comes Across

When your support team interacts with so many customers, they need to remember that they will not be able to keep them all happy and satisfied. Whether it’s a customer who had a bad day, which is causing them to be rude to you or a customer with very high expectations, your agent can not help them all. The key point is for your support team to learn to empathize with them no matter how they talk to you and try helping them as much as possible, ending the matter with everyone being satisfied.

In order for you to prepare your agents for these type of difficult customers, we will be taking a look at a few examples. The most common type is the aggressive customer, if your agent does something wrong or the product is defective, instead of telling or talking to your agent about it first, the customer will threaten to file a complaint, spread it on social media and take out all their anger on your support agent, who may not be at fault. They would be least interested in hearing the other side of the story from your agent. If such a case arises, your agent should know that they need to stay calm and positive, not show any signs of aggression which can lead to worsening the matter at hand. They should try understanding the customer’s frustration by being empathetic and wait until they have cooled down. Then take that opportunity to apologize and find out a reasonable solution which will satisfy them. Your agent should be strong enough to not be affected by hurtful words, which can hinder their decision making. This is the best way to deal with such a complicated and overwhelming situation.

The second type of customer your support team will come across is; the impatient one. This customer will not wait at all after messaging your agent, if they do not respond quickly, the will put up bad reviews and ruin your company’s reputation. This customer will not care about the fact that you have more customers to deal with as well. All customers do deserve a quick response, but they still have to wait for at least a few minutes, but giving top priority to an impatient customer is not the right thing to do either. To deal with such a customer, your agent should explain to them why it is taking so long to reply and if possible, refer him to a colleague who is free.

Then comes the vague customer, this type of consumer is not sure what they want, so it makes it difficult for your support team to understand what they want. They give a vague answer or description and sometimes they know what they are looking for, but are not good at telling the agent. For this type of situation, your agent needs to know how to help them out, without wasting precious time. Such customers often are not aware of the fact that they are extremely vague and unclear. To get the right answer out, your service agent can ask them questions leading to specific answers, this will speed up the process of determining what they want.

The last consumer you face is the complaining customer, who is not satisfied either with your service or your product. For this, your agent should immediately apologize, even if there is no fault from your side or if your agent is still unaware of where the problem started from. Then try resolving the matter within a single interaction, so that they are calmed down quickly.

With this information you will be able to train your agents better, resulting in an improved customer service experience for everyone. However, only knowing about these types of customers is not enough to turn your customer support system into the best one. You need to provide your agents with the right tools, through which they can gradually show progress, helping your bottom line. Kayako’s help desk software is excellent for helping your agents reduce their workload and increase productivity.