In Short: Receiving and handling negative comments can be tough, but controlling your reaction and handling it well is a skill worth working on.

Our pediatric allergist is very popular, and it's hard to get an appointment. She had offered to have a Skype chat with us in between appointments if something came up, and so my wife called up and booked one in after some wrangling about dates and times.

It wasn't until all the calendar shuffling had been done that we were told about the $75 "skype fee" on top of the normal consultation costs. Since the regular appointment was pretty close anyway we decided to cancel the Skype and save the money.

I called and cancelled, without giving any details (and I wasn't asked for any). Moments later my wife got a call from the receptionist, confirming the cancellation and asking why. When my wife mentioned the Skype fee the receptionist immediately went on the attack, justifying the cost because they are "providing a service" and berating my wife for wasting her time.

Such a small interaction, but very powerful in that it affects how we feel about the service the doctor provides even though she likely has no idea it happened. I can imagine that this receptionist has to deal a lot with busy calendars and demanding families. It's part of her role to protect the doctor from all those hassles. But she missed an opportunity to both improve her service and make her life easier.

Fight, flight or feedback

In my team, we work hard to make sure the customer service agents feel ownership of the product, and of the customer experience. They have the power to make things right for customers, and that's critical in them doing a great job.

The downside of feeling ownership is that when you get negative feedback it can feel like an attack. As though someone is saying the product (and therefore the person representing the product) is not good enough or has done something wrong.

When you feel attacked you might respond by attacking in return, like the receptionist did to my wife. Or you might respond with flight; ignoring the feedback completely or dismissing the customer's concerns as invalid.

Taking feedback

If you can take some time to consider your response, you can choose not to fight or flee. Instead, try to listen or re-read the comment from the customer's perspective. People who don't care about your product or service don't bother commenting, for the most part. They just silently disappear.

So if someone has taken the time to contact you it's probably because they have a problem that they thought your product or service would solve, but hasn't yet. Handling tough conversations is not exclusive to customer service; we can use the same relationship tools that have always worked.

Understand their context

You are not your customer. What feels huge and important to them can appear insignificant or irrelevant from your perspective. So read or listen carefully for clues on their situation. Are they under stress because they have their own customer haranguing them? Or is it a really busy time of year?

It may not be clear at the start of the conversation, especially in a real-time situation. In that case:

Show them that you have listened

With their context in mind your first response should be to tell your customer what they just said, in your own words. You might know this as 'reflective listening'.

For example when a customer says:

"I can't believe you don't have that feature! Surely it is a basic requirement of a service like yours, and it should only take your developers a few minutes to implement."

Very often you know that in fact it's not a popular request, and that it actually could be quite complex to implement effectively. Before getting to that though, make sure the customer feels like you have heard them.

"I can see how that's a pretty important feature for you, it sounds like it would make things much simpler in your situation."

Even if you then have to tell them it's not going to happen, at least you can acknowledge their feelings about it. You can also use this time as a way to better understand their context, and ask a few questions about how they'd use that new feature or why this issue really hurts them.

Just asking the questions and showing genuine interest is often enough to calm down a stressful situation.

Let them know what will be done with their comments

Acknowledge their feelings, and of course address any specific issues raised, then let the customer know what's next. Will you be forwarding their comments to the design or developer teams?

Perhaps you'll be recording their feedback for a future project? Or submitting a bug report on their behalf? Giving an honest picture of the effect their comments will have is a great way to wrap up the discussion.

Provided of course you then follow through and take those actions.

Put it into practice

If you provide support by email it's relatively easy to change the way you respond to negative comments and stress, because you have less time pressure.

Just taking a moment to breath before you type can make the difference. On the phone or face to face is tougher, but a great first step is just to focus on the reflective listening.

Everybody likes to know that they are being heard, and listening effecively is a skill that you can develop like any other.