Some customers are a right pain in the inbox, there's no denying it. They have a way of frustrating all attempts to help them, or of interpreting everything in the worst way. But still, they're our customers and we want to help them. The question is: How can we do that while remaining sane, and with a full head of hair?

I have two sons, born a few years apart. My first son was born in very stressful emergency conditions with an epidural and lots of chaos. My second son ultimately was born into a chaotic room too, but for us the two experiences were vastly different.

What changed? Before my second son was born, my wife and I attended a Calm Birth course with Peter Jackson (not that Peter Jackson, though I did fear we'd signed up for a 9 hour labour over 3 years).

The core idea of the course is to help pregnant women and their partners to change their perspective on labour and child birth, to alleviate the fear, anxiety and tension that can occur. We learned a lot more about the process of labour, and practised using tools like breathing, meditation and visualisation during the two day course and in the weeks leading up to the birth.

The difference in the two labours, for my wife, was honestly completely astounding. She experienced the same labour pains for just as long but this time she was much more informed, and felt more in control, calmer and less fearful.

She went through the entire labour, complications and all, without any pain relief. It was truly amazing, and the difference was purely a mental shift that we'd both learned in less than two days.

If our minds are capable of making that sort of change, dealing with undeniable physical pain and emotional stress in a completely different way, then my complaining about a support vampire starts to seem more than a little self indulgent. For one thing, it's pretty hard to put a labour on hold.

Still, as the head of customer service I am sometimes asked to deal with upset people, or people who've simply worn out other team members. I try to practice some very simple calm customer service techniques. I think they'll help you too.

Practicing calm customer service

  • Breathe—Even on a phone call you can take a moment to breathe and let yourself relax before speaking. Tension in your body absolutely affects the way you respond.
  • Change your perspective—Describe the situation to a colleague from the customer's point of view. Instead of "He screwed up his settings and now he wants us to sort that out right now", try "He's in a huge rush trying to get this job done, he knows he's made a mistake and now he's really worried that he's not going to make it."
  • Ask for the customers story—Asking the customer to tell you a bit about what they're trying to do can really help reshape the way you're feeling about them (and help them understand you are there to help). You both want the story to have a happy ending, but if you don't know their story it's really tough to help them get there.
  • Change your language—The words we use to describe a person and a situation don't just record our emotions, they can create them. Consider carefully the way you're thinking about the customer. Is she pushy, aggressive, impatient? Or is she excited, keen to make progress, really engaged with your service?

The beauty of practicing calm customer service is that it doesn't rely on the customer changing his behaviour. He may well still be loud and aggressive, just as going through child birth still involves a lot of physical work.

Calm customer service helps you to see the same emotional and physical situations in a very different way. That can make all the difference in the world to your feelings about the customer, your company and your work.

I'd love to hear your best calm customer service stories; what do you do to handle a stressful or tiresome customer situation?

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