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Defusing Tactic # 19: Avoid Repeating Hot Words & Phrases
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Written by Robert Bacal
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Hostile customers will use a lot of hot words and phrases in their verbal attacks. They may call you stupid, incompetent, an idiot, or accuse you of being racist, or corrupt, or lazy or... well you get the idea. What you DON'T want to do is repeat the hot words that the customer uses. Read an example provided to learn how to respond to a customer's use of a hot word. Here's an example to demonstrate how to respond to a customer's use of a hot word.
If a customer says: "You wouldn't treat me this way if I wasn't 'green', you just don't like green people". and the employee responds with: "Your race doesn't affect how I treat you. We deal with lots of green people here".
The employee has made several mistakes here, not the least is responding to this attack with a defensive statement. Apart from that, the employee uses the word "race" which is a hot word, and repeats the word "green". Most words connected with ethnic background are hot, so this is a mistake, and likely to cause the conflict to escalate. .....how to respond? There are always non-hot words that mean about the same thing. These you can use. So the employee could have said: "Your BACKGROUND doesn't affect how I treat you. We deal with people from EVERY WALK OF LIFE". The employee has removed the hot words. It still isn't a great response because it dignifies the attack, and focuses on it, but it is a good example of how you can replace hot words with non-hot phrases.
This is an excerpt from the Defusing Hostile Customers Workbook. For examples of hot phrases and words, see pages 78 and 79. And for more detailed help on defusing customer hostility, click here. |
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Customer Service 
