- 1). Relax all employees prior to their shift. The supervisor should speak to the entire group in the customer service department before they start their shift. The primary focus of this meeting is to get everyone to relax by stretching at their workstation and taking some deep breaths. This provides energy and helps representatives prepare for the day at hand.
- 2). Practice effective customer service under stress. Hold a training session to talk about the stressful situations that can arise. Training sessions should emulate real-life situations as much as possible. Role-playing is a useful way to train customer service representatives. This provides a representative with an opportunity to be the customer and the customer service representative.
- 3). Practice listening. In customer service, when you listen to the customer and get all of the information necessary, you empower yourself to correct problems. Stress can generate when you don’t have all of the facts and when you feel powerless to correct a situation. As the customer is talking, take notes and then paraphrase your notes back to the customer. This method ensures you know exactly why the customer is unhappy.
- 4). Take ownership of the problem. Provide customer service representatives with a method that allows them to take ownership of the situation. Require customer service representatives to apologize for any inconvenience the customer may have experienced. Next, they should assure the customer that they will handle the problem and follow up, when necessary, to confirm that the issue has been resolved.
- 5). Put the customer on hold. If you feel like you are losing your composure, ask the customer for permission to place them on hold. This provides you with an opportunity to gather your thoughts and collect more information about the customer's account and their situation in general. By adding a brief pause to the interaction, you gain greater control over it, relieving stress as you formulate a new game plan.
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