How to Turn A Difficult Customer Into A Raving Fan

I am often asked the best way to deal with difficult customers. You know the ones I mean, those very demanding repeat customers you would rather do without but cannot afford to. They come in with a chip on their shoulder and a sour look on their face. They ignore your attempts to engage them in friendly conversation but are very quick to complain when you fail to meet their very high expectations. Indeed, nothing you do seems to please them. Consequently, when they walk in the door everyone tries to be busy or take a break to avoid dealing with them. And when they walk finally out, everyone left standing breathes a sigh of relief and asks: “What’s wrong with this person? Why do they always make dealing with them so difficult?” The view that the customer is the problem is so common there is an entire industry built around training courses showing how to deal with ‘problem’ customers. But perhaps it is not just the customer who is being difficult.

Noleen Turner, manager of the Port Macquarie branch of the Holiday Coast Credit Union in New South Wales recently discovered there is another way of dealing problem customers apart from battling with them or trying to manipulate them. For the past two years, the Holiday Coast Credit Union has been on a journey to become customer driven and Noleen has been one the first to be prepared to re-examine everything her branch does from the customer’s perspective. This has lead to some startling insights, significant changes, and some exciting and very rewarding results.

For several years, Noleen and her team have dealt with a long-term customer of advanced years who fits the description of a difficult customer perfectly. Before he retired, this customer owned a business and did all his business banking with the credit union. Any time there was a change to the credit union’s procedures, he would complain either about the credit union or the government depending on whom he thought had instigated the change. “Everything was a major issue,” says Noleen. “Although my team and I were always pleasant and treated this customer respectfully, we were never able to build any rapport with him.” Fuel was added to the fire when, as a result of the introduction of Anti Money Laundering Legislation, the credit union required customers to use a password of their choosing when doing account transactions. This customer just hated using a password and dealing with him became a battle to see who would break first. It even got to the point where staff would take it in turns to serve him. When Noleen spoke to her staff about their reluctance to serve this customer, they told her how difficult he was to deal with. “We explained to him why we had to ask for his password,” they said,  “but he just didn’t want to listen to what we had to say.” That is when it hit Noleen that perhaps this customer was always in a bad mood because he felt the credit union did not value his business enough to take the time to learn what was important to him.

The next time the customer came into the branch, Noleen invited him into her office for a chat. She learned that her hunch was correct. He told her he was usually in a bad mood because, although he had been a customer of the Credit Union for many years, it seemed staff treated him as if his business did not count for much. To him, the password issue proved that. Since he was a long time customer, he expected staff would know his password so every time they asked for it, it told him they did not recognise him or the value of his business. That is why he got so irritated he told her. It did not take long before he expected he would be having a bad experience at the branch so he came in expecting a fight.

Once Noleen got to know her customer, his expectations and grievances, the solutions were easy to find. She introduced him to each staff member and explained that he was a loyal and valued customer. Later she talked to them about how important it was they recognised him when he came into the branch. These days, whenever the customer walks into the branch, the person on the Greeting Desk greets him by name and walks him over to a teller he knows. Since Port Macquarie is a training branch, sometimes the only teller free is a new teller-in-training. In this case, the Greeter introduces the customer to the trainee and explains he is a valued member of the credit union. The Greeter then explains to the customer that the trainee must learn to go through some security checks as part of their training and that he would be playing an important role in helping train this new teller if he would go along with these checks. The customer really likes this as it makes him feel a part of the credit union team.

But has any of this made a difference? Late last year this customer deposited large sum of money into a Term Deposit following the sale of a property.  He knocked on Noleen’s door especially to tell her he had done that and then told her what a great young team she has. “Moreover, this grumpy customer is now a friendly, chatty customer who is a pleasure to deal with,” says Noleen. “He is now a one of the branch’s biggest fans and routinely tells people what a great place the Holiday Coast Credit Union is. You can’t buy advertising like that!”

The customer has not been the only one to  change, however. “As a team, we have learned we were the ones fuelling the confrontation,” says Noleen. “Now we are looking at every one of our processes as if we were the customer and asking ourselves how we would feel. It’s really enlightening!”