Am I being Manipulated?

Having been a customer service practitioner for most of my adult life I have come across different types of clients, some were stubborn human beings the kind that even if you lay on the ground for them to walk on you, they would still claim that you are not flat enough whereas others were superbly nice and offered lunch or cash rewards after getting quality services,the kind who have fallen in love with the company or the product to an extent of defending you if someone else complains about you right up to social media. The stubborn clients would morph into rude ones and eventually end up being manipulative by trying to guilt trip you,slowly reeling you in with a barbed bait and then boom! before you know it your head is gone and you are only left with your body trying to figure out what really led to the decapitation. The irony of such situations then becomes this, statistically the most problematic 10% of your clients might end up taking 80% of your time and energy while only contributing 7% total share revenue,which then begs the question is the customer always right?
Once I met a lady,for all intents and purposes lets call her Mrs. D and no pun intended, she was entitled and felt rather special. Credit to her however,she taught me the difference between having confidence and having an ego. Being young and out-going,something I had to be for my internship program to convert into a job,I believed that she rather kept me on my toes and helped me develop grit. I saw her for the first time on a day when I was manning the reception area of our offices,when she came in without the normal pleasantries and demanded to see the general manager and if that would not be possible she would go directly to the CEO,at this point I feel that I should explain the size of the company. The company had employed five hundred of the finest employees and was making turnovers into the hundreds of millions so to date I still wonder if the CEO would actually meet her on the day considering also that he was out of town. I digress,on engaging her despite all the walls that she had put around her she explained that I was rather too young to help her out and besides she would prefer to be treated better by getting sat in an office and get a cup of tea. It was not all gloomy and sad for me since she also said that she liked my energy and patience. The problem was that the GM was not around and there was also the small fact that I couldn't escalate a problem I would solve because it would portray my incompetence. Anyway I yielded to Mrs. D's demands,the problem then was,at a future date she complained that I had wanted to kill her through food poisoning and yet I got her the tea that she had requested. After solving her problem on that date she became a frequent visitor to our offices and always requested for me to help her with her transactions the only downside to this was after every of her visits I used to get summoned at my boss' office to answer to incompetency questions,good thing was that I had an understanding boss who questioned her motives because ideally if I was as bad to her as she claimed,why then would she always request for my services.
As a customer service practitioner you will come across clients who will make you feel unimportant and incompetent that I can guarantee you however, it is your responsibility to be level headed and goal oriented because at the end of the day they will help you grow your patience and have a reputation. However, when it comes to manipulative clients make sure that you always share information on them with your colleagues and utilize your company's grapevine to ensure that all accusations by a client are well documented and familiar with everyone. This then might lead to creating a strategy on how to handle a special needs client,for instance Mrs. D at some point accused my female colleague that she was trying to touch her inappropriately but she would not report it because hey! it could be their little secret as long as she got all the services she required. In a week's time it all  changed when she came back and was yelling that my colleague did not handle the matter with enough care and she should be fired for sexual advances towards clients. Had I never been there as a witness my colleague would have been fired and chances are legal action taken against her. As a last point you should always act as if the client will behave sensibly every time you interact all the while remaining alert with every sense of you as you watch your own feelings. Why? you may ask,because the minute you retaliate you will have enabled the manipulator.
Oh! and going back to my statistic Mrs. D was bringing in an income of 20,000 Kshs. annually and the tab was on the company she worked for.

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