Key Takeaways
- Embrace Empathy: Recognizing and responding to the emotional state of customers is crucial for positive interactions.
- Recognize Diversity: Customers come from varied backgrounds and have different experiences, influencing their behavior and expectations.
- Personalize Interactions: Tailoring communication and solutions to individual customer needs enhances satisfaction and loyalty.
- Understanding Customer Behavior: Realizing that perceptions of rudeness, stupidity, or entitlement often stem from unmet needs or misunderstandings can improve service quality.
- Foster Positive Relationships: Building a rapport with customers, treating them as individuals, and acknowledging their importance can transform potentially negative situations into positive outcomes.
- Meet Rising Expectations: The demand for personalized, attentive service is growing; businesses need to adapt to stay competitive and keep customers happy.
- Promote a Customer-First Culture: Infusing empathy, understanding, and customer appreciation throughout an organization leads to better customer experiences and business success.
Why Are Customers So Rude and Entitled? A Deeper Exploration
Many of you will be familiar with Google’s autocomplete feature – suggestions which pop up when you start to type in a word or phrase, based on common queries other people have searched for.
Google’s autocomplete suggestions can be pretty telling in what people around the world are thinking about their customers.
Apart from the search engine itself, there are also other great tools out there to help curious customer service professionals see all of the questions people are asking about customers all around the internet.
So, what are some of the top questions being asked about customers?
Typing in “Why are customers” into Google brings up four top search terms, with some telling results for everyone working within customer service.
“Why are customers so rude” is top (and according to search tool SEMrush, around 260 people search for this term every month).
“Why are customers so stupid” and “Why are customers so entitled” are also top suggestions (For example: “Why are customers so stupid” rings in 110 searches per month).
Finally, “Why are customers important” is the final suggestion – with a mere 10 searches per month.
These results indicate there are a lot of frustrated customer service workers out there, turning to Google for answers to their questions – who presumably aren’t getting answers from their managers.
So – are customers actually rude, stupid or entitled?
Customer service is one of the hardest jobs out there, but three experts explain below how these viewpoints are missing the mark – and how you can turn these interpretations around.
Why Are Customers So Rude?
Contributed by Hutch Morzaria, Customer Experience Leader
Why are customers so rude? While I wouldn’t want to call this an “age-old question”, it’s clearly a question being asked by many customer service professionals.
Let’s face it – we’ve all experienced it. Hearing a customer go on and on about what seems like a minor mistake, or even something that doesn’t seem like a big deal at all. It’s tempting to stereotype customers in these moments and even wonder – “why are customers so rude?”
We’ve all experienced times when circumstances have tested our tactfulness. And angry customers tend to take out their frustrations with wait times, service levels, price and overall product functionality on the closest target – and quite often, that target happens to be the frontline agent.
Fortunately, there are certain things that you can do to help handle these types of customers and improve the situation.
Firstly – remember that they’re not all bad!
The majority of your customers are probably not rude. In fact, I’d warrant to say that the bulk of them are actually probably quite polite, so don’t tarnish them all with the same brush.
Pay Attention to Your Customer Interactions
If you become brusque and abrupt in your interactions, you may find customers mirroring your behavior. Keep calm and don’t forget to listen throughout the interaction.
Make sure you’re not interrupting; let them speak and share their problem completely. If needed, restate their complaint to them. This helps confirm that you grasp the issue and shows them that you’re listening. If you can see why your customer is upset or rude, you can then focus on addressing the problem with care and understanding.
Work with the customer to find a mutually acceptable solution that meets their needs and is within your remit. If you’re unable to solve the issue immediately, come up with a plan that the customer agrees with and get that plan underway.
Dealing with rude customers is difficult. It’s easy for them to get under your skin when their complaints are patently untrue and unfair. No employee should be forced to listen to abusive behavior or language, so if the interaction goes in this direction, it’s important to escalate and get help.
However, if you listen to them, you’ll probably find that there is a reasonable justification for their attitude. As you follow the steps outlined above, you’ll often find them genuinely apologizing for their attitude and rudeness. Not all customers are rude, and with a little bit of listening and empathy, you have the power to turn them around.
Why Are Customers So Stupid?
Contributed by Isabella Steele, Customer Service Expert
Sometimes customers say things that are so… well, stupid.
So much so that you really can’t find any other way to put it (except perhaps, really stupid).
Whether they are contacting your company about a red product they thought would be blue, are needing you to slowly explain how to add items to their shopping cart, or are yelling at you for apparently no reason, some customers leave you dumbfounded at their complete lack of understanding of how things work.
Before you start pulling your hair out because of something stupid a customer said or asked, remember that you are the expert in your company’s processes: not them.
As much as it’d be nice to live in a world where your customers knew everything, if they did, they probably wouldn’t need you!
The reality is that the world is full of people who have all sorts of different lives, stories, educational backgrounds, and abilities. People aren’t always going to be the way you want them to be, and that’s okay! It’s part of what makes things interesting.
The next time you catch yourself asking ‘why are customers so stupid,’ notice the expectations that you are putting on your customer, and your desire for them to be different. Although you can’t change who your customers are, you can change the way that you are thinking about and reacting to the situation.
Start by changing your story about the situation from an accusatory to an empathetic one.
Maybe the person who didn’t take the time to read about the product before purchasing is running low on sleep because of a new baby.
Maybe the person who needs you to explain how to use a shopping cart is from a different generation, or has never had access to online shopping before.
Maybe the person who is yelling at you for no apparent reason is just having a horrible day, and never learned how to not take that out on other people.
When you can have a dialogue with your customers without judgement, you will be able to reach a faster, less stressful resolution. And, you will be open to seeing processes that really aren’t clear, or that do need changing!
Apply empathy, understand your customers’ needs, and patiently meet them at their level. With a little bit of luck, you might teach them something that empowers them in the future, and change their shopping experience for the better.
Why Are Customers So Entitled?
Contributed by Angela Sokolovska, eCommerce Expert
Imagine you visit your favorite coffee shop. The barista recognizes you straight away, greets you by name, and puts in an order for your favorite drink. They understand you, know your needs, and provide great service with a smile.
You’d be delighted, right? This experience is becoming more and more common, and it doesn’t just apply to coffee shops – the rise in customer expectations for great service applies to businesses of all types around the world.
It’s no secret that customer expectations nowadays are high. If your customer gets frustrated, they can easily amplify their negative experience, and spit flames through social media. And yes, they know that they’ll be heard this way. Customers aren’t afraid to call out businesses who are emotionally deaf or who don’t bother to understand them or their needs.
You probably ask yourself, “Why are customers so entitled?” Well, it’s because they just want to be treated as humans, not just “some customer”.
So, what do customers really want? They want hyper-personalization. They want you to know their name, and even deeper, to know what motivates them. They want to know that you are going out of your way to help them rather than trying to extract money from them.
You must take into consideration that your role is to deliver value in order to exceed customer expectations. And nobody says that satisfying entitled customers is easy, but it’s completely possible.
Try to call them by their actual name instead of madam or sir. Go out of your way to help them and offer customized solutions to meet their needs. Understand that they are more than just a default customer, rather, they’re part of the family that is your business – and you’re a part of that family too.
Every customer has concerns and doesn’t want to feel like they are talking to a robot.
Learn to listen to them and respond in a personalized manner – not by reciting a script.
Try to be more empathic and understanding, as this will empower the customer and help them to receive the service that they have come to expect.
The key to satisfying entitled customers is by combining basic insight with emotional intelligence. Apply those things, and you’ll find that your perception of customers is transformed – you’ll be boosting your relationship with them and framing them as partners in your work, rather than adversaries.
Why Are Customers So Important?
Hutch, Isabella and Angela explained why, even in frustrating scenarios, we need to cut customers some slack. Whether you’re a head of customer experience or a contact center agent, customers are the people who you work for, keep the wheels of your business turning, and money flowing in.
Without customers, your business simply would not exist. While most of us can see that customers are important for businesses, it’s also true that serving customers sure isn’t easy. Even the best of agents will remember times when they’ve been left speechless over a customer whose behavior has taken them aback.
But if you’re ever on the brink of snapping due to customers who you see as lacking in manners, intelligence or tact, mentally swap positions with them and think of occasions you’ve received stellar service from a company. It’s likely that they valued you and viewed you as important – which in turn, helped you to feel valued and important, reducing the likelihood that you’d get angry or upset with them.
In short, being treated well helps you to treat others well.
As a customer service professional, you directly contribute to that feedback loop – rude, entitled or demanding customers never exist in a vacuum, and are usually made that way through having experienced a lack of empathy, terrible processes or a lack of understanding from businesses.
When we write customers off as rude, stupid or entitled, we close the door to them – risking them going to a different business who truly understands them, and leaving us with the unsolved problems which caused negative customer behavior in the first place.
In this new world of customer experience, customers are important – and it’s the people and businesses who understand this, socialize it in their staff, and infuse a customer-first culture throughout their companies who truly lead the pack.
Originally published here.