#TDSU Episode 191:

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:02:49 - Setting the tone from the start

00:05:36 - Gaining control without losing trust

00:07:07 - Handling difficult customers with finesse

00:08:45 - The magic of labeling and mirroring

00:10:10 - Using whispers to calm the storm

00:11:05 - Knowing when to walk away

00:15:08 - The underrated power of an apology

📺 Lifetime Value: Your Destination for GTM content

Website: https://www.lifetimevaluemedia.com

🤝 Connect with the hosts:

Dillon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dillonryoung

JP's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanpierrefrost/

Rob's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-zambito/

[Rob] (0:00 - 0:18)

I had a customer who said, I am so pissed off that this software isn't working. And I said, I'm sorry, you're frustrated. And she said, did I say I was frustrated?

I said, I'm pissed off. And so I was like, I'm sorry, you're pissed off. She was like, thank you.

Moving on. I was like, okay, all right, cool. And I learned a very valuable lesson.

[Dillon] (0:29 - 0:51)

What's up lifers and welcome to the Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man, Rob with us. Rob, do you wanna say hi?

I'm pissed off. What's up? Is that a reference from like a news conference or something like a press conference?

It's a reference from one of my former customers actually.

[Rob] (0:51 - 0:54)

And I've probably told you the story, but could be.

[Dillon] (0:54 - 1:00)

And I am your host. My name is Dillon Young. Okay, keep going.

It's just the two of us. So it's a reference to what? Which customer?

What happened?

[Rob] (1:00 - 1:31)

So I had an interesting experience probably a decade ago where I had a customer who said, I am so pissed off that this software isn't working. And I said, I'm sorry, you're frustrated. And she said, did I say I was frustrated?

I said, I'm pissed off. And so I was like, I'm sorry, you're pissed off. And she was like, thank you.

Moving on. I was like, okay, all right, cool. And I learned a very valuable lesson in mirroring and reflection that then was part of a bigger school of thought around the art of de-escalation.

[Dillon] (1:32 - 1:38)

Which is what you asked to talk about today. So tell us a little bit more about it.

[Rob] (1:39 - 2:28)

So de-escalation is super important and it's very difficult, but it's super important, particularly in customer success because it affects all of our outcomes that we're trying to achieve. Say we're trying to achieve KPIs around retention. That's obvious.

Say we're trying to achieve outcomes around expansion or advocacy. Well, you're not gonna get there if you've got angry customers. Not only because A, those customers who are angry, they're not gonna refer you.

But B, your angry customers will prevent you from talking to your happy customers. And that's why so many of us feel like a punching bag at the end of our days, never getting to the things, the quote unquote strategic work that we wanna get to. So what I wanna give to you, what I wanna gift you with is my top 12 de-escalation strategies that I've learned.

I think it's 12. I think it's 12. Rapid fire.

[Dillon] (2:28 - 2:32)

Wait, top 12, you think it's 12. So you don't have this written down?

[Rob] (2:32 - 2:32)

I do.

[Dillon] (2:32 - 2:48)

You're just gonna fire them off? I do, it's just not numbered. Oh, okay.

All right. Rapid fire, meaning I'm not allowed to talk. Is that what you're alluding to?

We'll talk when I'm done. You can take a backseat here. Yeah, yeah.

Go ahead.

[Rob] (2:49 - 5:35)

Okay, number one. Now I'm gonna go in the sequence of the escalation. Boy, this doesn't seem rapid.

Imagine you know you're walking into an escalated call. Imagine you're a manager, someone escalated past your people and now you're gonna speak to them. So first thing I learned is to react to the escalation with this alarming, surprising level of excitement.

So as much as you might be dreading the call, show up excited. Be like, I'm so glad we're here to talk today. And to get your problems resolved.

And that tends to catch the customer off guard. And set the tone for the call. Number two is to then beat the customer to the agenda.

Because if you let the customer start talking too much or if you spend too much on the, hey, how are yous? The customer will plow you with their agenda and you have to beat them to it. So a lot of times I'll get on these calls and say, I'm so happy we're getting a chance to talk today.

Your time is really valuable. I wanna make sure that we use our time correctly. I have 30 minutes for this call.

I wanna give you the first 20 minutes to explain it, to hear your issue out. And then I wanna spend 10 minutes on my resolution. Which implies I have a resolution.

So what that does is it keeps me in the driver's seat. And what I also did there was number three, I told the customer the parameters of the call, how long we have. So they know I have an out if they end up spiraling, I can get out of the call.

And number four, what I did there is I gave them the floor. Well, I don't know if I did that explicitly, but what I wanna do is I wanna say, I wanna give you the floor, right? And that's when I turn the mic over to the customer to give them the floor, which in some scenarios, the customer just takes the mic.

In other scenarios, the deescalator just talks and talks and won't give up the mic like this, what I'm doing right now. And both of those are ineffective. So if you give the customer the floor, it keeps you in the driver's seat while making them feel validated.

Number five, mirroring, we talked about that. I had this angry customer in Rhode Island once. She said, Rob, I don't know what to tell you, your reports, they are so.

And so I was like, yeah, they are, you know what? They are, and that was great because she actually like then that was the one, I was the one person who was able to win her trust in our organization because I used her exact words back to her. Number six, don't just agree with them, which is challenging.

Challenge yourself to agree with your customers, but then expound on their points. So when a customer says their reports are, you're like, you know what? Honestly, yeah, and they're lacking.

There's these reports that you might need and these reports that you might need. And these ones, they don't always work and the data, you might not trust the data. It feels so counterintuitive to agree with them, but that's how you win their trust, which is the first step in the escalation process.

Now I'm at my midway point, so I'm willing to take questions.

[Dillon] (5:36 - 5:48)

Yeah. No challenging questions, just sort of like clarifying questions. So typically it sounds as though you're explaining these from the perspective of like a manager.

Is that?

[Rob] (5:49 - 5:58)

Well, yeah, I learned most of these as a manager, but I also learned them when there was no manager on our team and my buddy and I would pass the phone back and forth and both pretend we were the manager.

[Dillon] (5:59 - 6:25)

Okay. I'm gonna ignore that for a second because that feels underhanded. It should otherwise be like a very- Who's the manager today?

So this also, I wanna maybe put some words in your mouth that I think there's a lot of preparation that goes into these conversations. You do not ever wanna get into one of these. You don't wanna get pulled into a meeting that is spiraling out of control by one of your director reports.

Like, hey, Rob, I really need you on this call. This dude's chewing me out.

[Rob] (6:26 - 6:26)

Yep.

[Dillon] (6:26 - 6:38)

You always want time to prepare your talking points to understand what the possible shortcomings are that are really like getting stuck in their craw so that you can have those additional details you can share to empathize with them, correct?

[Rob] (6:39 - 6:39)

Totally.

[Dillon] (6:40 - 7:06)

All right. I do have one question I wanna take a step back. At the very beginning, you said a couple of ones that felt like you wanna stay in control, but I have dealt with many an alpha in these scenarios that is smart enough to realize that you're trying to do that and does not want to afford you that control.

What do you do?

[Rob] (7:07 - 7:16)

Well, that's why what I was saying before is you wanna try to beat them to the agenda, acknowledge their time is valuable, and give them the floor. So that keeps you in control.

[Dillon] (7:17 - 7:42)

Yeah. I'm thinking of all of my worst customers I've ever had. I've had ones that you try to assert dominance, so to speak, right?

Whether that's actually what you're trying to do or not, they might take it that way and then they pout like they don't wanna give you all the details. Yep. Or like, well, I already explained all of this to my CSM.

[Rob] (7:42 - 7:43)

Yep.

[Dillon] (7:43 - 7:50)

What do you mean I have to explain it to you? They just want to be difficult. Anyway, I understand the point.

Cool, keep going.

[Rob] (7:50 - 8:42)

Yeah, some of them do just wanna be difficult. And the thing is, if you actually take a moment to empathize with those customers as hard as it might be, because I know what it feels like to be getting cursed out on the phone and you feel your skin crawl with just how angry you are with the customer. Your quick intermission lesson here is, what I learned is if you are escalated within yourself, you're not gonna be any good at deescalating your angry customer.

You need to deescalate your angry customer by first deescalating yourself and being calm internally. Reminding yourself that, look, in most of our lines of work, we're not saving lives here. If all they can do is curse at me, like, okay, it's gonna be okay.

But let me finish my point. So number seven, labeling is a strategy that I learned from the expert negotiator, Chris Voss. He basically, you're familiar with his work, right?

[Dillon] (8:45 - 8:54)

I don't, I actually don't know if I've ever, I mean, he just gets cited so often, but I don't know that I've ever actually read his stuff. Labeling, I recognize, and of course I recognize his name.

[Rob] (8:54 - 10:09)

Yeah, labeling is, it's actually, there's many ways to do labeling, but labeling is a strategy to label the situation and or the person that you're speaking to or even yourself strategically. So labeling the situation might be like, this is a really difficult situation. And just saying something like that helps you sort of step back.

Labeling the other person is really effective too, to say, you seem like someone who really cares about your business. You seem like someone who really cares in general. And that validates the customer and helps them reflect on themselves.

It also then encourages them to behave in ways that are psychologically aligned with that value. Number eight, when they're yelling, try lowering your voice. I worked with this one guy, it was crazy.

He like would whisper to the customer and I was like, why are you whispering? He was like, because they were yelling at me. And I was like, wait, that works?

And he was like, yeah, so it's crazy. Like if I lower my voice, they start toning themselves down. And I learned another strategy from Chris Voss.

What am I at, number nine? Which is when they use extreme phrases, like you never help us. There's one word that you can say, which can get them to reel that back in.

Do you know what that is? Oh yeah? Never.

[Dillon] (10:10 - 10:12)

So you just repeat it back to them.

[Rob] (10:12 - 10:25)

Yeah, you just pick the, when you catch them using extreme words, you pick the hyperbolic word, you repeat it back to them just as a question, like never. And they're like, well, not never, but you know, you actually could be doing a lot more to help us.

[Dillon] (10:25 - 10:55)

So many of these examples though, I guess I keep imagining in my head, this guy who, or gal, who does not want to play ball. And when you whisper at them, or you repeat words back at them in a questioning tone, like they would not take kindly to that. They would ask to talk to the CEO.

[VO] (10:55 - 10:56)

Sometimes.

[Dillon] (10:56 - 11:04)

Would you say that you probably just had the conversation too soon? Like you should have waited until they cooled off a little bit?

[Rob] (11:05 - 11:52)

Well, that's why I liked what you said before. I think you said something to the effect of taking time and preparing. And actually I didn't mention this, or I didn't include this in my tips, but I would say, if you feel things are spiraling, don't be afraid to call it off.

And I know that can be really hard, but you might have to call off the call. And call out the situation, use your labeling to say, I'm noticing that the situation is very escalated. I think we would be, or I've found that we would be more effective if we gave it some time.

And if you allow me the time to do my research and come back to you with the best option we have available and not something that I'm hastily coming up with off the top of my head here, that can be a really good way to escape the situation and align to the customer's best interests.

[Dillon] (11:53 - 12:44)

But it's hard, really hard. I do think the way in which you do it is doing it correctly is hard. Because I think you and I have probably both heard of the people who say like, he was being a real to me and my CSM.

So I told him that if he didn't tone it down, I was gonna end the call and he didn't tone it down. So I ended the call. And it feels very punitive when your customer is very clearly spiraling emotionally because you're impacting their work in some way or another.

From my experience, that is exactly what you do not wanna do is punish them. You rather, I love the way you phrased it of like, I'm trying to help you in that I don't know that we're gonna get the best result if we continue this conversation.

[Rob] (12:45 - 14:58)

Yeah, yeah, it's very much a when they go low, we go high type approach. Little phrase I made up, I did not make that up. Thanks, Michelle Obama.

But actually, so that was my next, that's a good segue to the next tip. We're at nine or 10 or what? 10.

10, I think I have 13 actually. But anyway, so 10 is when they're spiraling and you need to interrupt them. You've been in this position before?

Interrupt them with whisper. Interrupt them with something for their benefit. So it's like, if I may, I just wanna repeat this back to you just to make sure I have my notes really clear and I can get this over to my product team.

That's a much better way of, I've seen a lot of people even including recently saying, don't talk over me, don't talk, don't, hey, hey. It's like, no, you can't talk to a customer that way. So number 11, I've often found you get more out of the customer if you remind them and inform them that you're only as effective as they make you.

So I've often told customers, here's an example to come full circle with the guy who was cursing at me. I said to him, I totally get where you're coming from. Look, I curse a lot too, especially when I'm angry and especially with stuff that's this serious.

You seem like you take your business really seriously. I appreciate that. We've built our business on folks just like you who take their businesses really seriously.

At the same time, now notice I didn't say, but, that's a little subtle tip. Try to avoid the buts, people don't like the buts. But at the same time, I noticed that you've been cursing at my team.

And I noticed that when you do that, my team feels belittled. And they're a customer success team. So if they're feeling belittled, are they gonna be more or less likely to help solve your needs?

And the customer eventually slowly acknowledges, I see where you're going with this. Shut up. I agree.

Okay, fine. I'll stop cursing. And that worked for like three months.

Then he went back to his old ways, but we reminded him again. But if you inform the customer that you're only as effective as they make you, then you can get a lot more desirable behaviors out of your customers.

[Dillon] (15:00 - 15:07)

All right. I think we've had two or three 11s now. I think we're at the last one.

Last one. Is that right?

[Rob] (15:08 - 15:52)

Last one. Bring it home. This one's potentially controversial, but as you're closing the escalation, don't be afraid to apologize and thank the customer.

A lot of people don't want to apologize to their customers. They're like, I'm not apologizing. But I was like, actually, apologies often result in situations.

You're like, look, I'm sorry. I understand your experience has not been what you were looking for. That's not the norm for us.

If it were, we wouldn't even be in business. So I need you to hear me at the very least say sorry and say that this is not in line with our values, the outcomes we were looking for. If you're disappointed, I don't blame you.

I am too. I've invested a lot in this as well. Put me to the test and let me see what I can get done for you.

Something like that.

[Dillon] (15:53 - 17:07)

I want to wrap this up by, I love everything you said, and I think it's appropriate. I think you don't, you know, add them to your toolbox and use them as often as you can. And when appropriate, you're not always going to have an opportunity to do it all in sequence like that.

I think the one thing that has helped me a ton in these situations is remembering that you have power and not using that in any sort of nefarious way, trying to assert dominance over the customer or anything like that. But in the same way, let's apply it to this example of apologizing. Apologizing does not mean you're wrong necessarily.

To your point, it was, we don't ever want our customers to feel this way. So I'm sorry that you feel this way. That does not mean that it wasn't in, at least in some portion, the customer's fault.

And so like you can still decide to not do what the customer is asking for at the end of the day, but that doesn't mean you can't empathize with them. I love this. That is our time though, Rob.

So we do have to say goodbye until next time. Come back and join us again soon. I think I will.

[VO] (17:14 - 17:45)

You've been listening to The Daily Standup by Lifetime Value. Please note that the views expressed in these conversations are attributed only to those individuals on this recording and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of their respective employers. For all inquiries, please reach out via email to Dillon at lifetimevaluemedia.com Find us on YouTube at Lifetime Value and find us on the socials at Lifetime Value Media. Until next time.

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