Frontline SOS: How to deal with difficult customers

There has been a noticeable increase in signs reminding customers to respect staff in stores, banks, restaurants and other environments that employ frontline workers. 

These signs represent a welcome shift from the customer-is-always-right mantra of the past. However, the continuing prevalence of speeding tickets, street litter and alarming wildlife selfies on social media remind us just how many humans find signs easy to ignore.

Your frontline employees may appreciate the attempt to set behavioral boundaries, but they also know it’s not enough. What your employees really need is a complete understanding of the rules of engagement and help building skills to manage even the most demanding customers. 

This training is no longer a nice-to-have: it’s a top priority for those in frontline roles. Keep reading to explore how widespread customer incivility impacts the frontline workforce and get practical advice for helping your staff learn how to deal with difficult customers. 

Handling difficult customers is a top challenge

According to the Deskless Report 2024, dealing with challenging customers tops the list of issues impacting frontline employees and their managers. 

This trend around customer interactions hasn’t escaped the attention of learning and development teams. In fact, eight of the 10 most popular microlearning topics in Axonify’s Content Marketplace relate to handling upset customers or workplace safety. In 2024, frontline workers tapped into this expertly curated content to answer 4 million questions across three popular topics: 

1. Using communication to resolve conflict
2. Dealing with difficult customers
3. Dealing with abusive customers

The Marketplace data also reveals a 20%+ knowledge growth in individual topics. This suggests that frontline employees still have a lot to learn when it comes to how to deal with difficult customers. But reinforcing the right knowledge and behaviors to help frontline staff achieve satisfactory resolutions is not a one-size-fits-all exercise. 

Different experience levels intersect with diverse customer types

 When it comes to addressing a customer’s concerns, your employees possess varying degrees of experience, resilience and skill. For example, a teenager starting a first part-time retail job might work side-by-side with a seasoned, five-year veteran.  These two employees will likely react differently to an angry customer yelling at them.  

This built-in disparity is further compounded by asking frontline staff to gracefully navigate unique types of demanding customer scenarios. Here are some examples:

• A bullying customer in a grocery checkout line becomes aggressive when sale items they want to purchase are out of stock.
• An indecisive customer trying on clothes in a retail store keeps an associate busy fetching options for an hour, yet remains disappointed with the options presented. 
• An impatient customer at a quick service restaurant threatens to take their business elsewhere when they think their food takes too long to prepare.  
• An opinionated financial services client keeps talking over their advisor and arguing with the rates and options presented. 

You can’t stop customers from behaving badly, but you can help your employees fill customer service knowledge gaps. You can also help them build the skills to actively listen, maintain a professional tone, politely explain policies and take control of the resolution process. 

Teach employees how to deal with difficult customers

Irate customers come in many different forms. So, it makes sense to equip your employees with a variety of skills they can draw on to remain calm and in control when faced with customer complaints.

Sharpen communication skills

Empathy and communication are key to defusing tense situations. An irate customer doesn’t want to feel like they’re dealing with an employee who doesn’t care or someone who is regurgitating a corporate script. But, if your employees haven’t learned useful conflict resolution skills, they’re more likely to revert to rote answers in stressful moments. 

Imagine a customer complains to a grocery store associate about an out-of-stock advertised sale item. The associate could offer up two very different responses to this situation: 

• Deflecting response: “I’m sorry, but that item was really popular so it’s out of stock now. There’s not much I can do about it, but maybe check back later this week to see if we got more in.”

• Empathetic response: “I understand how frustrating it is when you come in for a specific item and it’s not here. Unfortunately, that item sold out quickly this week. Please bear with me while I quickly check whether we’re expecting more shipments or issuing rain checks. I’d also be happy to help you find a similar product that might work for you.”

Even extremely angry customers will calm down more quickly when they receive an empathetic response because it makes them feel heard and understood. Employees with great customer service skills tend to communicate from a place of empathy, but few instinctively know how to do it without proper reinforcement training. but few instinctively know how to do it without proper reinforcement training. 

Continually reinforce the right behaviors

Your onboarding may include a Customer Service 101 module, but frontloading everything an employee needs to know into that initial experience is a recipe for forgetting. It’s not compatible with how our brains retain important information long-term.

Delivering continuous training using short, bite-sized bursts of training lets you reinforce key knowledge and skills in just a few minutes each shift. It’s an approach proven to make critical behaviors stick. Just ask sportswear and footwear giant, Foot Locker. 

Before each shift, Foot Locker’s 44,000 global team members complete a few minutes of customer experience training through the brand’s Lace Up platform powered by Axonify. The team’s strong engagement with this training approach is translating to higher customer satisfaction in stores. 

Your frontline LMS should also measure what employees know and don’t know along with how confident they are in their right (and wrong) answers. This data lets you personalize ongoing training and coaching to each learner rather than delivering generalized content to the masses. 

Root training in reality

Upset customers can stress out employees, triggering the fight-or-flight response and releasing adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones divert resources from higher cognitive functions, like problem-solving and memory recall. 

Ingraining learning through ongoing reinforcement helps to mitigate the stress-memory effect. Here are other actions you can take to help employees remember to do the right things in highly stressful moments on the job:

• Use realistic scenarios in your customer experience training. You want an employee to be ready to confidently address unhappy customers in all sorts of situations. Incorporating multiple scenarios into your training will challenge them to apply their knowledge in different ways.

• Offer job aids that are easy to access in the flow of work. A grocery associate would rather use a handheld device to quickly look up the rain check policy than leave a fuming customer alone in an aisle while they frantically track down the right answer.

• Include a variety of training formats to help build memory muscle. For example, go beyond digital training to offer targeted 1:1 manager coaching. Consider adding live role-play exercises to let employees practice their skills and receive immediate feedback in a risk-free environment.

Prep managers to provide meaningful support

Employees won’t always be able to handle angry customers on their own—whether due to inexperience, stress or a particularly tense situation that isn’t de-escalating despite best efforts.

Present, capable managers can help resolve these situations. But don’t get trapped into thinking a manager’s tenure with your organization automatically equips them with built-in conflict resolution skills. Managers also need the right level of training and support to be successful. According to our 2024 Deskless Report, many aren’t getting what they need: 

• Two-thirds of managers say they are trying their best, but often making it up as they go.  
• Only 35% of managers say they are engaged in their jobs. 
• Managers report feeling more stressed, angry, sad, lonely and worried than their frontline team members. 

When managers move on to new opportunities they remove an essential crutch for frontline employees. Proactively offering managers ongoing, right-fit support can avoid unnecessary turnover and the resulting negative impact on overall employee engagement.  

How to help managers succeed

• Clarify expectations. Many managers are promoted to the role because of strong individual performance. This doesn’t automatically make them great people leaders. Mapping out successful behaviors is the first step towards defining what knowledge and skills they need to succeed.

• Offer real-time support. Many managers can feel like they’re building a plane while flying it. They don’t intuitively have all the answers, but they also don’t have the luxury of waiting for their busy bosses to provide clarity. Instead, they need excellent documentation and a reliable place to access the answers to best support team members and handle angry customers.  

• Think agile when it comes to training. Structured training programs have their place, but making managers wait six months for the next scheduled event won’t help them solve problems now. Plan to deliver impactful training more often by taking the time to understand their workflows and seamlessly fit microlearning into each shift. 

Beyond training, you can also use a simple group chat to connect managers with their peers, making it easier for them to collaborate and share experiences. Don’t feel that you have to stop with managers. Opening up opportunities to share also benefits frontline employees. 

Encourage solidarity and growth by sharing stories 

Over the years, the Deskless Report has repeatedly found frontline workers are more likely to stay in their jobs when they like the people they work with and trust their managers. You can help your team feel more connected by encouraging everyone to share their lived experiences around how to deal with difficult customers. Here are a few examples:

• Sharing tips on how to practice active listening to boost customer satisfaction.
• Offering examples of tense situations where they’ve ensured a customer feels heard.
• Revealing how a combination of positive language, eye contact and body language can calm a customer’s anger.  
• Telling stories of remaining calm and professional when confronted by rude customers.

Sharing success stories is an awesome opportunity to celebrate wins and further educate team members. Offering a simple way to capture and communicate anecdotes digitally makes it easier for all employees to participate. For example, Axonify offers built-in team-based communication channels and social media-style timelines in the same platform where teams log in to complete daily training. 

De-escalate tension and drive up customer satisfaction 

Thankfully, we’ve moved past the mindset that every customer is always right—even when they behave badly. But this doesn’t mean a frustrated customer or rude customer who has a bad experience in your operation won’t tell their friends or leave negative reviews. 

The good news is the majority of frontline employees are professionals who take pride in their work. Many indicate that helping a customer is a top 5 indicator of a great day at work. 

Now for some great news: you can prepare every frontline employee to build stronger customer relationships by continually developing meaningful skills—like problem-solving, communication, de-escalation and resilience. And it can happen by delivering fewer than five minutes a day of reinforcement training that’s bite-sized and personalized to their needs. 

Looking for more strategies on how to deal with difficult customers in frontline workplaces? You’ll find them in The Deskless Report 2024. You’ll also discover heaps of practical advice for meaningful changes you can start making today to tackle the frontline’s toughest challenges.  

👉 Grab your copy of the full report.