How to Deal With Rude Customers

In any customer service environment, dealing with rude or difficult customers is an inevitable challenge.

Whether you’re an advisor on the front lines or a contact centre leader overseeing operations, handling these interactions effectively is crucial.

To help we have put together some essential best practices for managing calls from rude customers, offering valuable strategies for both customer service representatives and those in leadership roles to maintain professionalism and resolve issues with confidence.

How Do We Define “Rude”?

A common mistake that contact centres make is to include “rude customers” under the term “angry customers” when they are often two different types of customer.

Typical advice for dealing with an angry customer, which goes along the lines of “let them vent”, is great in some scenarios, but not in those where customers are being excessively rude.

There are occasions where it is wrong to expect advisors to sit back and take the abuse.

By doing so, we can make advisors aware of the specific circumstances in which they can hang up.

So, set clear guidelines to define the difference between angry customers and the three types of rude customers. Then, define the scenarios in which advisors can be expected and not expected to hang up.

For those scenarios in which advisors are not expected to hang up, i.e. cases in which the customer curses at the advisor or insults their intelligence, we have put together the following ten tips.

If you are looking for advice on when agents can hang up on a customer, read our article: When Is It OK to Hang-Up on a Customer?

11 Tips to Handle Rude Customers

1. Show Empathy and Understanding

One of the most effective coaching strategies for advisors is to run training exercises that enhance resilience while encouraging a positive and upbeat tone. With a positive mindset, advisors will be better equipped to “rise above” rudeness and offer genuine empathy.

However, true empathy can only be shown once advisors demonstrate an understanding of the customer’s issue, as failing to do so can come across as inauthentic.

To achieve this, advisors should reflect the customer’s problem back to them (without the hostility) to confirm their understanding, and then outline the steps they will take to resolve the issue.

Then, if the customer offers a rude response, Jacqui Turner, the Founder of Turner Corner Learning Solutions, says:

“Follow that up with the sentence; ‘I’m finding it very difficult to do that when you are using offensive language (or whatever it might be). Let’s continue to work together on this to find a solution.’

Once you’ve done this, follow it up with a pause and what I’ve found is that they customer will also pause for a moment and this will help to settle everything down.”

2. Focus on Resolution, Not Winning

In the last point, we discussed the importance of keeping a positive outlook while on a call, but that is much easier said than done when a customer is being rude or abusive.

So, one of the key messages to pass onto advisors is “don’t try to win”. Instead pick your battles and train your employees to expect the unexpected.

As Laura Bassett says: “If your employees are prepared to handle these situations, their reaction will be more effective and be able to address the situation in real time rather than prolonging the experience.

A negative or reactive reaction can quickly create a more explosive situation and impact the company reputation overall.”

To better prepare advisors, use group listening exercises where you listen to call recordings of situations in which customers have been really rude to set advisor expectations for the type of calls that they might have to handle.

In these sessions, you can also talk about what you think the advisor did really well in terms of dealing with the rude customer, as well as areas in which they could have done better.

3. Recognise Desperation Behind Rudeness

Another important point to share with advisors is that a rude customer is often just seeking attention. This is why they resort to personal attacks – they know it will provoke a reaction.

When you sense a customer’s growing desperation, it can be good to use an reassurance statement, along the lines of:

• “We will help you get this issue resolved.”
• “I see where the problem is…”
• “This should be fixed before the end of the week.”

can be effective, especially when paired with a clear signal that you are taking ownership of their issue, helping to lift that burden off their shoulders.

4. Guide the Conversation, Don’t Control It

It’s easy to script responses for when a customer is rude, but different customers will react in different ways to those responses, making these scenarios difficult to control.

While a script can be nice to fall back on when the advisor begins to struggle, a well-trained advisor should be able to gauge how best to respond.

So, provide a choice of empathy statements and techniques for handling the rude customers and role-play each technique in training, so advisors are comfortable in using each.

To help advisors to choose which technique is best for each advisor, you can use training activities to improve emotional intelligence and empathy.

For advice on developing your agents skills, read our article: Customer Service Skills: How to Improve Empathy, Active Listening and Knowledge

5. Avoid Telling Customers to “Calm Down”

Nobody, in the history of the world, has every calmed down when someone has asked them to calm down. Instead, they get more irritated that you’re focusing on their mood and not their query – so they get even ruder.

The customer is feeling powerless, so the aim is to get to a point where they feel as though they have some control over their predicament.

For this reason, using the phrase: “It’s becoming quite difficult to help you, as I’m hearing a lot of offensive language (or whatever it might be). Let’s continue to work together on this to find a solution,” similar to what Jacqui suggested earlier, is so much better.

For more about knowing the best time to escalate a call to a supervisor, read our article: How to Handle Call Escalations

6. Slow the Pace of the Interaction

By carefully monitoring the tone of your voice, you can ensure that you remain calm and avoid provoking the customer into further displays of rudeness.

Our speech tempo often reflects our emotional state, so when faced with abuse, we may naturally speak at a higher pitch and faster pace.

However, this approach contradicts our goal – to foster a calm atmosphere where a productive, respectful conversation can take place. Instead, we should aim to speak more slowly and lower our tone, which can have a soothing effect on the call and help us maintain control over our emotions.

By being mindful of how our voice is perceived, we focus on something we can control, rather than reacting to the insults being directed at us.

If you are looking for advice on tone of voice in the contact centre, read our article: How to Utilize Tone of Voice in the Contact Centre

7. Build Rapport with Simple Techniques

There are some rapport-building techniques, such as matching the customer’s tone, which are absolutely not relevant when handling calls from rude customers.

However, techniques including using active listening to pick up on words that customers use to express their emotions can be very useful.

By using this rapport-building technique, the advisor is demonstrating that they have understood how the customer is feeling. Only with this acknowledgement can an advisor reassure the customer that they can help the customer fully move away from any discomfort.

To find out more rapport-building techniques that could help with angry customers, read our article: 27 Effective Ways to Build Customer Rapport

8. Demonstrate You’re on Their Side

A rude customer is often directing their frustrations at the organisation, not at you as the customer service representative. The best way to handle this is to position yourself as their “inside person,” rather than just another part of the system.

To achieve this, avoid using terms like “our” and “we” when referring to the company, and reserve them only for referring to yourself and the customer.

For example, avoid saying things like, “It’s our customer policy” or “we cannot do that for you,” as this can come across defensively.

Many advisors instinctively defend the brand when criticised, but it’s more effective to use personal pronouns like “I” and “you.” Use “our” and “we” only to express a sense of teamwork with the customer.

If possible, offer the customer your name, company number, and email address. This way, when they contact the company again, they can be connected directly to you, ensuring a more personalised service.

9. Send a Thoughtful Follow-Up Email

Whether or not you, as the advisor, were able to resolve the customer’s issue, there’s still a risk of losing their business due to their rudeness.

However, sending a simple follow-up email can leave the interaction on a positive note, which can be valuable in the long term.

It’s important to remember that this email isn’t an opportunity to ask anything further of the customer; it’s simply a gesture to “repair” the relationship with the business.

The follow-up also provides the customer a chance to reflect on their behaviour and potentially apologise, as they may feel embarrassed after the conversation.

Often, the customer’s frustration stems from other issues in their life, so offering them a chance to say “sorry” can help improve the dynamic.

10. Gather Feedback on Customer Frustrations

Advisors need a platform where they can raise concerns about any obstacles that prevent the business from delivering its version of excellence.

This platform should be central to any root-cause analysis, allowing advisors to report the reasons behind rude customer calls, helping you identify key sources of customer dissatisfaction.

By pinpointing and addressing these areas of significant frustration, you can drastically reduce the number of rude customer calls in the first place. This is the “proactive approach.” To implement it, filter complaint reasons and low customer satisfaction scores to identify key drivers of contact. Then, review the customer journey to identify moments of friction.

Customer feedback plays a crucial role in this process. For your most challenging call types, organise advisor focus groups or find other ways for advisors to share valuable feedback with you.

For top tips and strategies on how best to gather customer feedback from your frontline agents, read our article: Want Your Frontline Staff to Share More Customer Feedback? Try This!

11. Implement a Three-Strike Rule

By applying the techniques outlined above, you can create a more positive environment for having productive conversations with customers. However, there will be situations where this may not be possible.

In these cases, the customer may persist with insults, raise their voice, or refuse to listen, often insisting the advisor is “wrong.”

When faced with a particularly stubborn and rude customer, Jacqui Turner recommends implementing the “three-strike rule.” This means that after the third instance of rude behaviour, the advisor is authorised to end the call.

Jacqui advises, “Warn the customer that it is difficult to assist them when they are using such language. If the behaviour continues after two warnings, the advisor can end the call on the third offence.”

Once the call is terminated, a contact centre coach should review the call, providing feedback to the advisor on what they did well and areas for improvement. This helps with their ongoing development and better equips them for handling rude callers in the future.

Watch the video below where Rob Clarke, Co-Founding Partner at Elev-8 Performance, explains the pros and cons of using the three strike rule in your contact centre – and what you could be trying instead:

What Can You Do to Better Protect Advisors From Rude Customers?

In addition to providing a space for advisors to report reasons for customer rudeness, there are other strategies the contact centre can implement to better protect advisors from rude customers.

Below, Frank Sherlock, VP International at CallMiner, outlines three effective approaches:

Use Call-Routing Strategies for Repeat Offenders

For repeat offenders, you can implement two call-routing tactics, depending on your willingness to continue serving the customer.

First, if you are still willing to deal with a customer who has a history of being rude to agents, route them through to an advisor who specializes in dealing with customers of this nature. You can do this through CLI recognition in your ACD system.

However, if you no longer wish to take calls from the customer who has repeatedly been a nuisance caller, you may wish to instead route them through to an extra-long queue. This is a particularly good tactic in handling prank callers.

Leverage Call Recordings to Identify and Share Best Practices

Every contact centre has high-performing advisors – the advisor that seems to be great at handling difficult calls. But do you really know the secret of their success?

By reviewing their call recordings, you can identify the strategies that worked well and share these best practices across your team.

Once you’ve identified those “great” calls, it can be a great training exercise to listen back through them with new recruits, so they know what to expect from rude callers and how to handle them.

Investigate the Root Cause and Address Customer “Triggers”

To stop rude customers from calling it is good to create a space for advisors to “feedback” customer triggers, but – if you have a speech analytics system – this will be able to do it for you.

By analysing each interaction, you can pinpoint the reasons why customers start angry or become upset during calls. This information can then be passed to the relevant department, which can implement changes to eliminate those triggers.

Additionally, this system allows you to identify emerging issues faster than reviewing a random sample of calls.

In Summary

Rude customers are not the same as angry customers, so make the differentiation and coach advisors on how to deal with each type of customer separately.

However, you will also have varying strengths of “rude”. Some customer may deserve immediate termination, if guilty of certain types of abuse – and possibly legal action.

Then there are other types of rude customer – such as those who swear at or insult the advisor. For these, teach advisors the ten techniques above to settle them down.

If these techniques do not work, implement the “three-strike rule”, which gives advisors clear guidelines to follow in terms of terminating the call.

Finally, think about what you as the contact centre manager can do to protect advisors from rude customers, whether that’s optimizing call routing techniques, making time for call listening or eliminating “triggers” for rudeness.

For more on handling calls from challenging types of customers, read our articles:

• The Right Words and Phrases to Say to an Angry Customer
• 5 Quick Fixes for Dealing With Problem Callers
• 4 Contact Centre Advisor Habits That Are Really Irritating Your Customers

Author: Charlie Mitchell
Reviewed by: Robyn Coppell