For global brands like yours, new/existing customers are crucial to ensuring steadily-growing brand growth/brand loyalty and securing long-term market share growth/success, affording a greater competitive drive in the global sales market. Considering customers’ grand importance, ensuring your customers receive top-tier customer service (CS) that proportions excellent customer experiences (CX) is crucial – because valued customers are more likely to remain loyal customers that return for repeat product/service purchases – which means:

• an increasingly substantial growth in customer retention,
• the incurring of cost benefits (such as marketing savings, as well as opportunities for cross-selling, reselling, up-selling, and longer product/service subscriptions),
• steady incrementation in average order value (AOV) and profit margins,
  and
• even ambassadorship from existing customers that spread via word-of-mouth their positive CS experiences to their friends, families, and acquaintances.

As part of the customer journey, it’s natural for global consumers to become frustrated/upset; while this is unfortunate, the manner in which your CS teams provide deescalation to handle/deescalate customer issues is vital for long-term customer retention/loyalty; it’s essential to learn how to effectively de-escalate. Let’s get into why de-escalation matters – as well as 5 worthwhile de-escalation techniques customers react to.

Why is De-escalation Important in CS?

Recently, a work-from-home SEO/SEM expert mentioned an issue with their internet service provider; in their city, their internet went down while getting an article published. Our frustrated marketing expert called CS to complain; to their surprise, the customer service representative (CSR) said in a very stern voice, “I’ve been receiving a lot of the same calls asking about this – I don’t know what to tell you. Just wait until service comes back” – and, then they hung up.

One remembrance our team had from the account was the importance of empathy; a 3rd party survey answered by 100 U.S. customers states the most important factors that create positive CX are:

• the showing of empathy,
• careful listening, and
• the effort to understand what’s communicated.
  Furthermore, active listening/empathy was considered as more valuable than refunds, upgrades, or promo codes.

The way your customer service reps behave during high-tension customer interactions either make-or-break customer loyalty – which means that:

• your business either loses a customer who then attempts to deter others from purchasing from your brand, or
• you gain that consumer’s trust and greater customer lifetime value.
  De-escalation is critical to long-term customer retention.

5 De escalation Techniques that Create Positive Customer Reactions & Customer Engagement Experiences

Here’s 5 de escalation strategies to ensure you provide effective deescalation and turn frustrating customer experiences into worthwhile ones.

Practice Active Listening/Demonstrate Empathy

Active listening requires being fully-submersed in listening to customers – rather than interrupting/rushing them; customers will then feel valued and begin to simmer down. Additionally, asking questions allows your CSRs to understand situations and get to the root of issue(s).

CSRs should:

• listen to customers’ interpretations of situations – as well as how they may feel that your CSRs intended actions may be different than what your reps originally felt, and
• put themselves in the shoes of their customers (empathy).
  Once customers understand your teams’ genuine resolve to do what’s best at hand, then customers will calmly work with them to get a valuable solution in place.

Offer Refunds, Upgrades, and/or Promo Codes When Necessary

Refunds, upgrades, and/or promos greatly deter contention, bringing highly-escalated situations to a positive.

• Have your CSRs speak to management regarding what’s possible to offer unsatisfied customers if they can’t resolve their issue(s) via other means.

Don’t Say “No;” Communicate How to Resolve Issues

There’s nothing more frustrating than for customers to hear a blatant “no” from customer service agents – or even to hear, “I don’t know;” these terms do nothing to de-escalate situations.

CSRs should:

• say phrases like, “I will look into this for you” and “I’ll do my best to solve this issue for you”,
• give detail into how they’re planning to resolve the customer’s problems, and
• when handling situations outside of their scope of expertise, they should explain how their expertise isn’t best suited to resolve the issues and that they’ll do the following:
• bring in the right person to handle the issue,
• file a report for the rest of the support team to see, and/or
• efficiently follow-up with the representative handling the customer issue.

Always Demonstrate Honesty

Not being honest with customers to ensure contentment/happiness runs the risk of creating more distrust if customers find out.

Instead of lying and/or over-promising:

• CSRs should ask for time to explore customer issues further – saying something to the effect of, “I promise to do my best to help you” or “While I’m not sure what the immediate solution is, rest assured I’ll do what I can to help you fix this.”

Always Stay Calm

De-escalating issues with raised voices or meeting customers at their anger levels is impossible and can make matters worse. It’s critical to remain calm; having CSRs control their breathing benefits in multiple ways:

• 1st, deep breaths calm the nervous system, allowing CSRs to think/respond clearly/calmly; focused breathing lowers the heart rate to take CSRs out of the high-stress response that naturally flows from high-stress situations.
• 2nd, a few deep breathing moments can give CSRs the time to collect their thoughts as a measure of preventing them from doing/saying things that cause long-term, lasting damage.

Appreciate/Value Customers, Ensuring They Know It

An additional thing to the above-mnetioned de-escalation techniques that your CSRs can take to finalize deescalation is appreciate/value customers, ensuring they know their worth. This should be timed wisely – as mentioning to customers their valued before solutions are provided is disingenuous. Once effective solutions are provided, having your business’ CSRs emphasize their customers are valuable goes a long way in creating a higher sense of brand value.

Callnovo’s Customer Service Outsourcing Solutions – a Viable Means of CX Quality Recovery

To compliment the above-mentioned de-escalation strategies which ensure successful deescalation – as well as their long-term customer retention advantages, our very own Callnovo Contact Center – a globally-outsourced 17+ tenure digital CX leader – is ready to support you with fantastic multilingual, omnichannel customer service outsourcing solutions that ensure top-tier CS that recovers CX quality, ensuring a high drive in customer retention/loyalty, leading to long-term sales market success.

Some of our outsourcing advantages are:

• Quality Expertise – from recruitment, to on-going training, to operations management, to brand success, our global CS/operations teams share expert service backgrounds/skills to ensure operations functions are carried out with the utmost success; we provide tailored service plans and ensure personnel are skilled to provide proper deescalation via usage of the above-mentioned de-escalation techniques – with expertise in such areas as:
• native language proficiency levels,
• interpersonal communication skills,
• customer-centric enthusiasm/service attitude,
• logical thinking skills,
• management/operations skills, and
• product/troubleshooting service experience.
• Round-the-Clock Service - due to our own tailored plans according to your own service needs, your business can maximize customers’ satisfaction/CX by always meeting their necessities – as we always ensure 24/7/365 customer support.

Conclusion

With effective deescalation by following the above-mentioned de-escalation techniques, your CS team(s) can successfully continue to re-build rapport/trust with customers, leading to an enhanced brand loyalty that consistently grows its business reputation and ensures greater success in the market amidst competitors. To help you accomplish this, our own Callnovo Contact Center offers a comprehensive multilingual, omnichannel customer service solution with customer-centricity in mind so you can meet your customers’ CX expectations through fantastic satisfaction experiences that improve long-term customer retention numbers, fortify your brand reputation, and secure long-term sales success.