Anger Management: A Look At The Anger Management Process

No business is perfect, and even if yours is, your customers aren’t. Dealing with angry customers can be difficult, and the outcome always results in a story. How you deal with them will shape that story and result in one of two life-long relationships: one of bitter loss or one of ongoing loyalty and referral to your business.

Let’s take a more detailed look at the anger management process and review a few proven methods of issue resolution.

Anger is defined as a completely normal, usually healthy, human emotion. It’s a strong feeling which triggers a desire to hurt someone or be unpleasant because of something unfair or hurtful that has happened. Anger by itself is not good or bad – it’s what the person does with his/her anger that matters most. Understanding the anger process can help control and shape the outcome.

The anger resolution process is very similar to the trajectory of a rocket launch. Understanding the stages of a launch can help you deal with anger in almost any situation. It takes a tremendous amount of thrust to launch a rocket weighing many tons. Rocket thrust can be generated in several ways, but it is essentially a controlled explosion that forces a projectile (the rocket) away from its resting position into a new position—in motion.

After launch, the combination of a loss of thrust and the laws of gravity (drag) immediately begin to put the rocket under stress, slowly drawing it back towards its resting position (the ground). Although smaller rockets may be fired to reduce or adjust the arc of travel, the rocket will eventually fall back to the ground. This same pattern is evidenced in the anger process. Understanding the key stages of an “anger launch” will lead to a ...

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...with the customer before noon, no later.

Finally, offer the customer the opportunity to contact you if they have any questions.

If you have not completed a diagnosis by the agreed-upon follow up time, you must call to let them know the status of the repair, and schedule a new follow up time.

If you are not able to follow up with the customer on or before the predetermined time, it is your responsibility to ask a co-worker to follow up for you.

Be Polite and Professional Throughout the Process

The key issue to remember here is this: Angry or upset customers, when handled properly, can easily become one of your best “fans” and tell many people about the quality of your store and integrity of its staff. Some of your best “press,” your best advertising, will come from those customers who were once unhappy but who were handled competently by you and your store team.