It turns out patience is not the virtue of burgeoning online customers, especially post-COVID! With the nearly doubled online activity than the pre-pandemic times, increasing familiarity with online transactions, improved tech, and the rise of the so-called “now customers”—enterprises are scrambling to deal with the increasing standards of prompt service delivery demanded by Impatient Customers..

Impatient customers, or rather ‘digitally-impatient’ customers, are on the rise, and your business might jolly-well face the colors of demanding and impatient patrons.

Let’s face this: your post-sales service to impatient customers can make or break your business—71% of customers believe a quick and prompt response is critical for a good customer experience.

All these factors and data point to why practical training of your customer support team about how to handle impatient customers is critical. So, if you’re wondering how to deal with the impatient customers, then this read is for you.

6 Steps on How to Deal With Impatient Customers

Here are six strategies that enterprises’ customer support team can use to deal with impatient people:

1. Provide assurance 

Your customer support team must not mirror the tone and voice of your customer—however bad it is—when talking to them, under any circumstance. For example, if they’re angry or whining, the support team should remain calm. Instead, they should assure customers that their issue has been noted down and the appropriate action will be taken to rectify the problem.

Assuring apt action can be challenging, especially when your team handles so many complaints, especially when dealing with impatient people all day. Nevertheless, the best way to ensure order is to sympathize and empathize with the customer. The support team should ideally let them know that the issue they are facing is rare and that the team will take proper steps as soon as possible.

2. Be calm and soothing 

Even if the customer is impolite, your customer support team should never behave similarly. On the other hand, when a support agent is relaxed and gentle, it will be much more difficult for an impatient customer to be rude.

However, if the support agent is impatient, it is likely that the issue will escalate, and the customer will be unhappy with the call. A Microsoft study (PDF) found 90% of Americans determine whether or not to avail service from a firm based on customer support quality. 

It is, therefore, critical to behave so that the customer is not agitated and considers repeated business with your company.

3. Inform them of the following steps

An impatient customer needs to feel that your team will now take action. Unfortunately, many customer support executives leave things vague while addressing their concerns.

This means that the customer may be unaware if or when your company will resolve their issues. This is why being more forthcoming and informative (and assuring) while dealing with impatient customers is critical.

Ideally, the customer support agent should lay out the road ahead for the customer. Suppose a person has received the wrong product. In that case, your team should give them a glimpse of the following steps: when a delivery executive will come to pick up the wrong order or when the correct order will be delivered, among others.

Customers always prefer timelines for your firm’s actions against their grievances.

4. Assure customers that their case is a high priority 

Customers often feel that companies do not heed (PDF) their problems once a sale has been made. Therefore, your company should try its best to show impatient customers that this is not the case.

When your support team conveys to the customers that their issue is a priority for your company, you signify that you value them and their experience. This is an important aspect when learning how to deal with customers.

There is a reason why most brands and customers place customer satisfaction so high in their list of priorities—brands want repeat business, and customers want excellent service. And scoring repeat business is much more cost-effective than finding new customers.

5. Be sincere

Your company’s customer support executive must be authentic and sincere when talking to customers. Your support agents must recognize that impatient customers feel irritation and frustration due to issues with your product or service.

Customers’ irritation often has nothing to do personally with the support agents to whom they’re releasing their feelings. It is the company’s and the support agent’s job to understand these dynamics.

Therefore, encourage your customer support agents to practice ‘reflective listening’—where the listener does more than just understand the speaker’s concern, but genuinely relate to it and respond conversationally.

6. Thank them  

What is an essential lesson on how to deal with customers? Unfortunately, many customer support executives leave the call without properly thanking in case of an impatient customer. This can be a costly mistake.

Customers need good after-sales customer support, and they need to feel that the company values them. If the support team does not thank customers for their time, they may feel like they’re a burden to the company now that the sale is over!

Effectively thanking the customer at the end, irrespective of their behavior, means that they leave the call with a good impression on your part. This can be crucial to pacify an impatient customer and maintain a positive brand image.

When you appropriately thank the customer, you demonstrate acknowledgment of their issue and assure them of prompt action.

Key Takeaways

If you’re an eCommerce store owner or own a small to medium-sized business enterprise, you should ensure that your customer support team has all the tools they need to provide adequate service.

Please remember nearly 90% of customers trust a company whose service they have evaluated as “very good” to meet their demands, according to a Qualtrics XM Institute report (PDF).

We hope this guide has given you an insight into how to deal with impatient customers and why it critically matters. However, if you’re worried about whether your in-house team can handle customer complaints effectively, then consider outsourcing the job.

We, at Helplama, deliver ready-to-deploy and fully-managed customer support as a service.

Alternatively, you can also consider Saufter for improving the efficiency of your customer service team. Equipping it with automated workflows, a knowledge base builder, and robust features ensures both customer and agent satisfaction. To provide swift responses, you can also go for the AI-powered live chat solution of Helplama. What’s more, they also offer customized pricing plans.

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