How do you deal with unruly customers?

[Justin89]

When it comes to dealing with unruly customers, how do you handle them? I hated working retail, as dealing with customers was always a burden. The times having to deal with an angry person, is never fun. Especially one who makes your life more miserable because, working in retail alone was a pain. 

But, as an employer, how do you deal with annoying and combative customers?

[James]

This is a very situational question and depends on how important the client is to you and how established the enterprise is. 

When you are brand new and still establishing reputation a negative review from a customer may have a great negative impact on your business and make it a bit harder to close deals. So early in the business lifecycle you are likely more focused on trying to appease all the customers and will be willing to go the extra mile to make someone happy. 

As you become more established though you learn how to spot these people and you can make sure you do not get involved with each other to avoid trouble before going in. 

Now if you have a long time customer and something went wrong but they have great history with you. Well of course you will do whatever it takes to make them happy again. 

It took me a long time to learn how to pick and choose the customers I was looking for. It is not going to be possible to make 100% of people happy. 

If I am dealing with an annoying or combative customer I typically just overwhelm them with kindness and positivity the conversation will end pretty quickly as I will not humor their problems. 

I know we live in a world where the customer is always right but when we are looking at this via a business owner/operator perspective we know they are wrong quite a bit.