Customer: “Why don’t you just do it this way, and it will take care of situation.”

Customer Service Person: “I understand what you are saying, but we can to do it this way.”

Then situation magically goes downhill from there and it is difficult to win back customer.

What Happened?

The customer service person used one word that has a powerful negative effect when dealing with customers. The one word, if you can imagine, brings out horns on customer’s forehead, turns his face red, tightens his teeth, and clinches his hands…the word is but.

This is because but is an exclusive word. The use of but negates everything that was said previously by customer. The customer then feels alienated and disrespected. It says to customer, “You discounted or ignored everything I just said and you are going on with your agenda. Well, you don’t respect me, so I won’t respect your solution.”

The Solution

If you are a manager you are by definition dealing with people. You are managing them. As such, to be successful you must be able to build up a rapport with those you are managing.

If you are to get best from your staff you must be able to encourage them, cajole them, or otherwise persuade them. Of course ultimately you may have to discipline them, but this is a last resort.

Why is it then that so many managers are so bad at dealing with people?

For those who have risen up ranks of a large company this can be a consequence of being appointed as a reward for competence or even excellence at their previous job, but of never having being trained in management. They may have been excellent at what they did before but need to be guided, mentored, and coached for their new people-oriented role.

A large company really has no excuse not to provide training needed. It has experience of others to draw on and it has (or should have) dedicated resources and structures in place to train internally or to buy in training from specialists. The consequences of not training its staff can be disastrous to a company’s future. If it does not appreciate absolute necessity doing so then it deserves to fail. If your company won’t train you, think hard about changing companies.

Some employees find themselves in another kind of situation. For those who’s job and responsibilities have grown in line with growth of their company opportunities for training are not so obvious. Those who started in a company made up of just a handful of people find themselves in positions of authority and power in a company employing scores or even hundreds of people, simply by virtue of having been with company from start. What was a small concern has metamorphosed into a much larger set up with hierarchies and levels of authority that simply were not there at outset.