CHAPTER 2
Leaning Into Criticism
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEARN an incredibly powerful technique that will stop most angry people in their tracks? It is proven, effective, and has good research behind it. And yet you probably never use it. Why? Because for most people, it feels like bungee jumping off a steep cliff. But once you take that leap, everything will change.
This technique is deceptively simple: Lean into what someone else is saying, and embrace that person’s criticism—with gusto—every time he or she speaks. In other words, when flames are coming at you, walk right into them and crank the heat up even higher.
Picture this: You just flew into town for Aunt Matilda’s wedding. It was great, according to everyone who went. And you have to take their word for it, because your rental car from Bonzo Rent-a-Car broke down somewhere between the airport and East Tumbleweed, and you spent the whole afternoon waiting for someone to mosey on over and fix the radiator. Now you are back at the rental-car counter. Compare these two exchanges:
You: Your rental car broke down and made me miss my family wedding, and I am furious!
Bonzo Rent-a-Car: I’m sorry, Ma’am, but unfortunately we aren’t responsible for any consequential damages.
You: Your rental car broke down and made me miss my family wedding, and I am furious!
Bonzo Rent-a-Car: Of course you’re furious! My goodness, this made you miss a wedding! Please tell me what happened here.
Which of these two openings is more effective? You know which one. I do not have to tell you. But you also know how most people react when a customer lights into them: They stand there with no idea what to say next, until they finally stammer something defensive that makes things even worse. Perhaps you do this yourself? (Be honest.)
Let’s break this situation down. You probably feel you have two choices: (1) defend yourself or (2) respond to the complaint. (Many of us also consider a third option: run!) Most of us instinctively choose the option that is virtually guaranteed not to work, namely the first one. Customers tell us how horrible we are, human nature takes over, and we try to explain that we aren’t really that horrible. Or we try to “educate” them about our policies and procedures. Or we try to tell them that we usually are much better than we were in the situation that ticked them off.
What then follows isn’t a matter of attitude. It is a matter of physics. You have done the equivalent of dropping a Mentos into a bottle of cola, causing a violent eruption. The customer feels unheard, and responds the way unheard customers usually do—which is not pleasant.
This leaves us with the other option: Respond to the complaint. This works better than defending yourself, but even this doesn’t always work well. Have you ever been in a situation where you felt you tried to address a customer’s complaint, but the customer still got angrier and angrier?
When someone is unhappy—especially if he is really unhappy—we tend to lean away from his complaints, emotionally and sometimes physically. We give bland acknowledgments, try to minimize the problem, and make excuses. Or worse, we say nothing at all. Even our body language gives us away: We tend to back off, make less eye contact, and close up our stance.
I propose doing something very different: Throw yourself headlong into the person’s grievances. Be right there with every bit of anger and indignation he is feeling. And then watch what happens. More often than not, the tension drains away, and you are suddenly in a rational conversation with Mr. Angry. That’s because he now realizes that you “get” him, and all that negative energy he was going to invest in fighting you has harmlessly vaporized.
Of course, there is much more to defusing a customer crisis than leaning into the other person’s emotions. At some point, you have to shift gears into problem solving. (We will talk about that a little later in this book in Chapter 6, particularly on focusing on what you can do.) But you will never get there unless you can show customers that you hear them, and get them on your side. In this chapter, we show you how leaning in can work effectively with a four-step process.
Step 1: Hand Their Complaints Back to Them
Imagine you are standing behind the front desk of a large hotel with a tired and angry guest in front of you. The air-conditioning didn’t work in her room last night, the front desk couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything about it then, and now the guest is telling you what a horrible night she had. What do you say first?
This part is easy, because the customer just handed you the words. Put them in your own words, and hand them right back to her. For example, “That’s terrible! It sounds like you hardly slept a wink last night.” Try these other examples on for size:
Customer: You did a horrible job of painting my kitchen! I can’t stand to even look at it now.
You: Yikes! It sounds like this paint job didn’t work for you at all. Please tell me more about what went wrong.
Customer: Your stupid product messed up my engine.
You: Wow, so this product actually caused engine trouble—in a new car, no less! That’s really scary.
Customer: What you just said to me sounded patronizing.
You: My apologies, I obviously hurt your feelings! Please tell me what bothered you about it.
In each of these cases, you took a moment to live where your customer lives instead of just jumping headfirst into your side of the story, even in the third example, where someone said something very challenging and personal to you. By taking their words and handing these complaints right back to them, you let them know that you heard them, that you processed what they were saying, and that it is safe to talk about it.
This technique is a form of paraphrasing, which we will discuss in more detail in the next chapter. It works best when you put the customer’s complaint in your own words as much as possible. Put your personal touch on what customers are telling you, and hand their thoughts back to them respectfully as a gift.
Step 2: Use “Wow” Words
Handing back someone’s complaint works even better when you use what psychologists call mirroring to reflect a customer’s emotions. If he is agitated, respond vigorously. If he is doing a slow burn, speak deliberately and with as much gravitas as you can muster. Be right there with him, use his words and thoughts, and match him feeling for feeling.
Most of us try to minimize bad things. We grew up that way. Think about phrases like “It sounds like you have a little problem with that.” “Others have had it worse.” “Calm down.” “You’ll get over this.” You probably use phrases like these yourself, because you think they will make the customer’s scary monsters shrink down and go away.
Instead, they have the opposite effect. Let me translate these phrases into what customers hear: “Go away. I don’t hear you. I don’t care what you are saying. I’m not listening. La-la-la-la-la-la.” This is why these phrases do not give you the results you want.
Instead, I want you to make a 180-degree turn in the road. Pick words that mirror the customer’s feelings as she stated them, and blow them up larger than life. Meet her where she is, and then go her one better. Give these examples a try:
Customer: You almost caused a horrible accident out there!
You: You’re right, that was a close call! We’re lucky someone didn’t get hurt or killed!
Customer: Your stupid camera didn’t work at my daughter’s graduation!
You: At your daughter’s one and only graduation ceremony? That’s awful! I’d be furious about that!
Customer: This food is terrible!
You: Wow! Sounds like you had a miserable lunch!
You see, your goal right now is to get the customer nodding his head up and down to whatever you say so you can calm him down and keep talking. If he doesn’t think you “get” him, it becomes his sworn duty to fix that by pressing you even harder. “Wow” language is a preemptive strike that takes hearing and feeling his story completely off the table so you can both calm down and get to business.
“But wait,” you say. “Doesn’t using ‘wow’ language imply that you agree with the customer, or that the situation is your fault?” No, it doesn’t. There is all the difference in the world between acknowledging someone and agreeing with that person. Even the world’s heartiest acknowledgment doesn’t change what happened, who is at fault, or what you will do about the situation. For now, your mission is to build a connection, and the quickest and most powerful way to do that is to match the customer’s emotions.
A Tale of Two Salespeople
One day I was asked by two salespeople, within twenty-four hours, to purchase extended warranties on products I was buying. Based on experience, I would rather be pecked to death by ducks than purchase an extended warranty. So compare the following two encounters.
The first was at a chain office-supply store—the same chain that put me through three weeks of torture and paperwork a few years ago when I tried to get it to fix a broken CD drive under its extended warranty. After the salesperson pressed me a couple of times to purchase a warranty for my printer, I finally spilled my tale of woe. The salesperson responded by staring at me blankly and saying, “But we’ve changed suppliers since then.”
The second encounter was with an appliance salesperson. When he asked me about purchasing an extended warranty, I shared the story of how another appliance store made me wait weeks before strolling on over and fixing a leaking water heater, with as much bureaucracy as could be brought to bear. This salesperson responded by stiffening up and saying, “That is totally un-acceptable! If I had an experience like that, I probably wouldn’t want an extended warranty either!” Then he politely explained the benefits of his store’s plan.
In the first case, I dismissed the salesperson as a clueless nitwit. I had just shared how his chain had made my life miserable the last time I listened to its song and dance, and he couldn’t have cared less. In the second case, however, I was listening. I paid attention to what this salesperson had to say. And if there was any way I could have been talked into purchasing an extended warranty (there wasn’t), he would have had a pretty good chance. He had my trust.
Step 3: Steal All Their Good Lines
This part is fun. Most people who serve the public worry about reactions to what they do. Instead of worrying, predict how they might react and get there first! Take a look:
You just wrote a parking ticket: “Amazing. I show up and write a ticket just before you get back to your car.”
You’ve run out of the hottest new Christmas toy, there are no rain checks, and a customer is livid about this: “You probably drove all the way down here just to get this.”
One of your students just flunked the big exam: “What a pain in the neck for you! You were probably hoping to have this course over and done with.”
I once went to my dentist hoping to get a small filling to take care of a toothache. He looked at my X-rays, turned to me, and said, “You are going to need a crown.” But before I could respond, he continued, “You didn’t want to hear that. You are thinking that crowns are expensive. And they take a couple of days out of your life. No fun at all. But here is why you should get one. . . .” At this point, all I could do was sit there in stunned silence, because he had taken all of my lines. (And I am now the proud owner of a new crown.) That stunned silence—the result of being heard and anticipated—is exactly the kind of outcome you want.
Step 4: Never Defend Yourself First
So far we have mentioned three things you should say. Now, here is one thing you should never say first: anything whatsoever to defend yourself.
Once in a great while I can read people’s minds, and I can read your mind right now. You are thinking, “But what if you are right and they are wrong? What if there are consequences? What if I have good and valid reasons for what happened? Why can’t I defend myself?”
Here’s why: The customer isn’t listening to you. Anything you say that defends yourself is going to pass through undigested at best, or enrage the customer at worst (probably the latter). In this moment, it is all about the customer. So your job is to get her listening to you first, and lay out the facts later. Here are some examples:
Customer: This is all your fault! (Note: It isn’t.)
You: No one wants to feel cheated. Let’s look at what happened.
Customer: Your clerk was incredibly rude to me! (Note: You overheard them both, and the customer was the one who was unreasonable.)
You: Everyone deserves to be treated with respect. What did the clerk say that offended you?
Customer: I’m upset, and I demand the moon and the stars. (Note: She won’t get them.)
You: We both want to make this situation right.
Note that I did not say you can’t ever defend yourself. At some point the facts of the matter can, and perhaps must, come out. But if you don’t first lean into what they are saying, they have beans in their ears and cannot hear you. Defending yourself too soon is ineffective when you are right and outrageously offensive when you are wrong.
Deliver Us from Bad Service
One year the street I lived on and ran my business from was renamed. Most delivery companies figured out how to deliver to this new address. But one delivery service often circled my town cluelessly with packages from my biggest client, having no idea where to go and eventually returning them to their senders.
I tried to sort this out with the carrier repeatedly. Its toll-free number routed me to the local office, and someone there would say something like, “Oh, you must have told Patty about your new address. Patty doesn’t work here anymore. Now you’ll have to talk to Trixie about it.”
The third time I called after missing a key delivery, the woman on the other end of the line said, “Look, sometimes we have problems with local deliveries, but at least no one can touch our international services.” As luck would have it, I had just returned from teaching a training course in Montreal, where this same delivery service refused to ship back my client’s computers at the last minute because its American account number didn’t work in Canada, as I took great pleasure in explaining to her.
Oh, by the way, this delivery company did finally figure out how to handle my situation: It eventually ceased operations in the United States.
So what can you do? Hear them and learn from them. And then, of course, shift gears into problem solving, hopefully with someone who is now listening to you instead of screaming at you. That is really all there is to it. You follow exactly the same approach whether the customer is right or wrong, the consequences are large or small, or the problem is solvable or not.
Why Leaning In Is So Hard
Leaning in is simple, powerful, and it works. So why do we so often say exactly the wrong things in moments of crisis? Because our intelligence trips us up. Critical situations put us on high alert, and that wonderful brain of ours kicks into overdrive coming up with ways to protect ourselves. Here are a few of the things your intellect is pounding on the door to tell you when someone is ranting at you:
If I give credence to the complaint, it will become my fault. Guess what: It already is your fault—in the customer’s mind. That is all that matters to the customer. And your silence simply makes you all the more complicit in this situation.
It often feels strange to be emphasizing how horrible and awful something is for a customer. It almost seems like an admission of guilt to the person saying it. But to the listener, the exact opposite is true. You become someone who “gets” that other person, and the listener instinctively flips a switch that turns you from foe to friend. And that makes everything that follows much easier.
The customer might demand more than I can give. Might? Heck, she probably will. So answer this question: What is more likely to rile up a customer into demanding too much: if you hear and acknowledge her, or if you turn into a block of ice?
Upset customers often pose, posture, and make outrageous demands. They do it when you try to help them, and they do it—a lot more often—when you try to ignore them. So you might as well let them do what they do, and then trust your communications skills to handle the situation.
We devote Chapter 8 of this book to what to do when people demand too much, but here is a sneak preview. When you acknowledge what another person wants, validate the feelings behind those requests, and focus on what you can do, you have a much better rate of success than if you use the “I’m sorry, sir” approach that human nature is pulling you toward.
I will just be fueling the anger by acknowledging it. Think about a parent with a fussy three-year-old in the seat of a grocery cart. The child is screaming, crying, and demanding candy. Ignoring this behavior or changing the subject sometimes makes the firestorm pass. The child slowly learns that yelling doesn’t always get you what you want, and the parent learns to turn a deaf ear to angry outbursts.
But your customer isn’t three years old, and you aren’t the customer’s parent. By going ostrich, you commit the cardinal sin of trying to defuse conflict: You make someone who is feeling unheard feel even more unheard. He reacts by puffing himself up to be even more threatening so you will pay attention to him. See where this is heading?
You aren’t alone here. Whole cultures often learned to deal with conflict by shutting down to it. We probably wouldn’t have had Visigoths sacking Rome in the Middle Ages if people could have figured out how to productively address their concerns (seriously; read your history books). And even today, many of us try to ignore or minimize the problem in front of us—and then pay a steep price.
I want something much better for you: I want you to be able to confidently defuse any situation. One of the first steps toward that goal is learning that you are almost always better off responding to an upset customer with gusto, and trying to see the world as she sees it. Try it the next time a customer is upset, and watch what happens.
PUTTING LEARNING INTO PRACTICE
1. You work for a large rental company. A customer marches in and shouts, “The tent you put up for us leaked and everyone got drenched, along with their meals! You’ve completely ruined our son’s graduation party.” What is your response?
2. The utility company you work for mistakenly sent disconnection notices to several thousand people because of a computer error, and—lucky you—you are on the phones today answering one call after another from customers who are furious about this. What is the first thing you say to each person?
3. You are a young doctor and get a surprise visit from a patient you saw yesterday. “Look at me!” she exclaims. She is covered from head to toe in a rash caused by the medication you prescribed for her the day before. What do you say now?