CHAPTER 5
Divide and Conquer:
The Safe Way to
Deliver Bad News
WHY IS IT SO HARD to give people bad news?
Perhaps it’s because we were all children once. Most of us learned the hard way that unhappy consequences often followed when we said, “Dad, I have some bad news to tell you.” And too often, we experience similar results as grown-ups when we say the same kinds of things to our customers. Especially when they are our most difficult customers.
So what do we do when we really must tell people things they don’t want to hear? Blurt it out and then duck? Beat around the bush? Bring in a supervisor? The urge to avoid delivering bad news is so strong that some human resources professionals have been known to deliver an entire termination interview without the person realizing they had been fired! And for those of us on the front lines of customer service, it is even harder.
Psychotherapists know that the best way to expose people to bad news is gently, in stages, with lots of empathy and support. They refer to this approach as systematic desensitization. This is similar to how they help people get over fears and phobias, by easing them into difficult situations. People handle bad news better when they are given the time and space to process a difficult message, and the person delivering the message listens and responds well.
In this chapter, we show you how to deliver bad news to customers by dividing your message into three distinct phases: an introduction that prepares the listener to hear something important, a summary that uses an appropriate level of detail to move the customer toward a solution, and an empathetic response to anything a customer might throw back at you. This three-step process will not only make your customer feel better, but will help you walk safely and confidently into discussions that most of us dread.
Step 1: A Good Introduction That Prepares the Customer
Let’s get one thing out of the way right up front: The worst thing to say first when you are delivering bad news is the bad news.
This may sound a little disingenuous. It isn’t. Linguistically and emotionally, blurting out the bad news first is the equivalent of throwing a cold, dead fish in someone’s face. When people feel shocked or confronted by something they were not expecting, they react with anger. And far too often, they take that anger out on you.
If there is one guiding principle to telling people things they do not want to hear, it is: Give the bad news second. Not third or fourth or fifth; that is beating around the bush. Instead, use an appropriate introduction that prepares the customer to hear something important while you position yourself as an ally.
There is no one all-purpose introduction. The exact content of your introduction will vary according to the situation you are in and its importance to the customer. Here are some examples of good ones:
The walkthrough: Offer to explain or walk through the situation with someone. For example, if a customer’s product has broken and the warranty has expired, start by briefly recapping its terms. “Let me walk you through the warranty coverage. All parts and labor are covered for ninety days, and major components are covered for one year. Since you have had this equipment for fifteen months, let’s go over some other alternatives.”
The acknowledgment: Start with a customer’s likely concern. For instance, if someone urgently wanted something finished on time and it is going to be late, start by acknowledging this urgency: “I realize it was very important to you to receive this on schedule, so I want to make you aware of what has happened here.”
Getting serious: Start the conversation by acknowledging the gravity of it, both to focus the customer’s attention and to make the customer aware that you are about to convey something important: “I have some difficult news about our project that I need to share with you. Could we sit down somewhere to discuss this?”
In each of these cases, your introduction serves two important purposes. First, it gives the customer the time and space to prepare for hearing the bad news. Second, it shifts the focus from you, the messenger, to the issue itself, while helping the customer see you as someone who can help.
Good introductions take time and practice, but they are a critical step in defusing bad news. For example, picture someone who is rushing up to the gate of a canceled flight at the airport. Compare these two responses:
No introduction: Sorry, your flight was canceled.
Good introduction: I need to let you know about an important change in your travel plans. You were scheduled to leave on the 6:15 flight tonight, and then connect in Minneapolis. We are going to need to reschedule your flights, and I want to go over some options with you.
In the first case, there is a good chance the customer will erupt at you, perhaps wondering why she wasn’t told sooner or demanding to know why the flight was canceled, or railing against your airline in general. All because of the shock value of discovering abruptly that her flight wasn’t leaving. With a good introduction, there is a much better chance that cooler heads will prevail, and the two of you will engage in productive dialogue and problem solving.
Delivering the Worst Kind of News
What if the bad news you have to deliver goes far beyond a typical customer problem? People in such professions as police work, health care, or the ministry are often the “first notifiers” who need to inform people about serious situations such as a violent crime, a terminal illness, or some other tragedy.
Dr. Nancy Davis, formerly chief of counseling services for the FBI’s own Employee Assistance Unit, has produced training materials, including a video, for delivering the very worst kind of news: death notifications. She outlines a process similar to what is described in this chapter: an introduction designed to prepare someone for the bad news; a frank summary that gets to the point and avoids euphemisms (for example, saying, “Your husband has died,” instead of, “He didn’t make it”); and, above all, presence and compassion.
As a principal narrator in the video, FBI chaplain Dennis Hayes points out that the wrong approach to delivering a death notice can significantly increase the trauma of the event. Here is some of his advice:
Use a team approach when possible, but choose one spokesperson.
Never deliver bad news on the doorstep of someone’s home; ask permission to come inside and talk.
Prepare the survivor by saying, “I have some disturbing news for you. Are there any family members you would like to have join us first?” Then ask the person to sit down, which allows a moment to prepare for the news.
Once you have shared the bad news, stop talking and let the other person process what has happened. Be prepared for a range of emotional responses, do not be judgmental, and respond with compassion.
Don’t use platitudes, such as saying a death is “God’s will,” and never tell a child that he or she is now “the man or woman of the house.”
Adapted from Dr. Nancy Davis, “Death Notification Training Video,” http://drnancydavis.com/home/death-notification-training-video
Step 2: A Proactive Summary That Moves the Customer Toward a Solution
What was the one thing you remember most about getting bad news yourself as a customer? In all likelihood, you remember a lot of stony silence from the person delivering the message. People tend to say as little as possible when they are delivering difficult news, and in the process, many of them come off like robots. This then leads many of their worst customers to get upset and try to force them to care.
There are times when silence is a good thing. For example, the previous sidebar just discussed the importance of stopping and giving people time to react when sharing tragic news such as the death of a loved one. But for less serious situations, we often have the opposite problem: We clam up and retreat to a silence that is perceived as rudeness and indifference.
In reality, most of us aren’t trying to be rude at all. Instead, we are simply moving away from the pain of the situation, like a child pulling his hand away from a hot stove. But when you learn to move toward the pain, everything changes. So step two of delivering bad news is to give a proactive summary that moves the customer toward a solution.
As the name implies, a proactive summary is information you volunteer to help the customer. Good proactive summaries have two components, details and options.
Details
Details help give the situation context. More important, they show interest in the customer. And within limits, the more detail you give, the better.
Details are not the same as excuses. Most customers will stiffen up and push back if you try to defend yourself, because no one cares whether something is your fault or not; they only care about their own agenda. But when you take the time to let them know what happened, they generally appreciate it. Compare these two responses:
Not so good: I would have installed your oven today if I could have, but the delivery guy was late. Wasn’t our fault.
Better: We have a team of people involved in installation like this. Today was a rare situation where one person on the team was held up somewhere else, and we couldn’t make all of our deliveries. I apologize for that. Let’s see what we can do to take care of this for you as soon as possible.
Options
Options are even more important. Customers, especially difficult ones, are focused on, “What’s in it for me?” So ideally, your discussion will close with options that benefit the customer.
Behind this obvious statement is a less obvious truth: The act of offering options is often as important as the options themselves. People frequently hold back from saying anything because they are afraid that what they can offer won’t be good enough, or that a customer will get upset. In reality, being proactive with other alternatives usually makes things much better, as long as you are frank and constructive.
Imagine that someone checks into your hotel late at night, announces that he is starving, and your only restaurant just closed. This person’s only options are a dingy pizza parlor three blocks away or driving to another all-night restaurant. Compare these two responses:
Not so good: I’m sorry, sir, our restaurant just closed.
Better: Since you are starving, and our own restaurant just closed, I’d like to suggest a couple of other options. First, there is Dingy Pizza. It is kind of a well-worn local eating place—it serves mainly pizza—but it is the closest restaurant that will still be open at this hour. If you would like a nicer place, I do have a couple of other suggestions within driving distance.
Just the fact that you are offering options serves an important purpose. It implies that the customer has a choice, and giving people choices is one of the more important ways of making bad news palatable to them. It also opens rather than closes dialogue. For example, if you tell this hungry customer, “You’ll have to go somewhere else tonight,” you are choosing words that shut down the discussion, and customers will often push back against that. Options, by comparison, represent the shortest path between you and a solution.
Notice also that giving a good proactive summary does not mean sugarcoating the news. In fact, as long as you acknowledge the other person, honesty is generally a good thing. It connects you and the customer, and focuses both of you on finding the best solution.
A proactive summary that provides good details and good options will set you far apart from most people who deal with the public. Think of all the times clerks have simply dumped the problem back into your lap, saying something like, “Sorry, you’ll have to wait,” “We’re sold out,” or “Your warranty expired.” When you take the time to craft a detailed, helpful explanation, you make it easier for them to absorb bad news without overreacting to it.
Step 3: An Empathetic Response to the Customer’s Reactions
Once you give a good introduction and a proactive summary, it is the customer’s turn to respond. If you have done a good job, the customer will hopefully react to the situation and not to you personally. Either way, you are going to hear the customer’s side of how your bad news affects that person.
Your reactions to these statements are the crucial final step in delivering bad news. Sadly, most of us focus on ourselves, not the customer. We say things that are defensive, minimize the consequences, or attempt to “bring the customer back to reality.” And none of this ever works.
Instead, acknowledge the customer’s situation and mirror the customer’s emotions by responding with empathy. Then use this empathy to link the customer with the best solutions you can. Compare our usual self-focused responses with empathetic ones:
Customer: This repair is going to cost me a fortune!
Self-focused response: We try to keep the costs of these repairs reasonable. And besides, this repair will be guaranteed for two years.
Empathetic response: You’re right, this is a lot of money! No one ever wants to have to replace a transmission.
Customer: I can’t believe you ran out of full-size cars, and I’m going to have to squeeze into a subcompact.
Self-focused response: Unfortunately, we can’t always predict the demand for rental cars. Next time, you might want to make a reservation.
Empathetic response: I don’t blame you at all for being annoyed about this. I prefer big, comfortable cars myself.
Customer: Your delays have held up this entire project.
Self-focused response: Sir, you have to understand that there were a lot of factors beyond our control.
Empathetic response: Absolutely they have! I realize that you were hoping to get this project completed last month.
These self-focused responses have two things in common: They are all technically correct, and they all make you sound conceited and indifferent because you haven’t responded to a single feeling the customer expressed. By contrast, the empathetic responses all mirror exactly how the customer sees the world and defuses the customer’s hostility.
The reason most of us do not use empathetic responses is simple: They make us feel like we are coming dangerously close to agreeing with the complaints and will thereby get ourselves in trouble. In reality, honoring a client’s perspective almost always causes less trouble, while defending ourselves or our policies usually creates more trouble. This is one case where the long way around is truly the shortest way home: Move toward your customers every time they open their mouths, and their tension will usually melt away.
Be Prepared for Anything
One day back in my corporate career, I was pulled abruptly out of a meeting by an ashen-faced technical support agent. Something terrible had just happened with one of her customers, and she wanted me to call him about it. The customer had shipped the agent his computer so she could do a complex software installation for him, and because of a communications mix-up, our IT department mistook it for one of our own incoming computers and erased everything on its hard drive.
As the agent, the customer’s account manager, and I huddled in my office, we did two things to help make this call go better. First, the account manager and I shared stories about customer situations that had gone wrong for us in the past to help everyone relax. Second, I went over what I would say on the call: my introduction, a clear description of what had happened, an unequivocal apology that took ownership of the situation, good assessment questions, and a game plan for service recovery. I suggested that we all view this situation as a lab exercise for handling a difficult situation and getting through it.
As the others held their breath, I made the call, launched into my planned dialogue, and waited for the customer’s response. His reply? “Ah, there was nothing important on that computer anyway. No big deal.”
The other two people let their breath out once it became clear that the customer wasn’t going to get angry. And I was relaxed either way because I knew exactly what I would say and do no matter how the customer responded. The moral of this story? With the right skills and preparation, you, too, can view calls like these as “another day at the office.”
Most of the time, delivering bad news effectively is as simple as following these three steps. But they all take practice; good introductions, proactive summaries, and empathetic responses rarely come to us in the heat of the moment. When you create, edit, and refine statements that work best with your own difficult messages, and then teach these statements to everyone on your team, the difference in how customers react, and in how confident you feel with customers, will truly amaze you.
PUTTING LEARNING INTO PRACTICE
1. Someone is trying to return a broken laptop to your store for a refund. The screen is cracked, there is a muddy footprint on it, and it is clear that the customer caused the damage. What might be a good way to begin your response?
2. What kind of explanation might you give about refusing him a refund?
3. The customer responds by complaining how expensive laptops are, and wondering why a big, profitable chain like yours can’t just take this computer back. How would you reply?
4. What options might you offer this customer to try to make the best of the situation?