Rise Above the Difficult Customer: Serving While Earning Respect

Whether face-to-face, over the telephone, or in email exchanges, our conversations with our “difficult” customers, be they faculty, students, staff, or parents, can sometimes be frustrating and fail to reach mutually satisfactory resolutions. Have you experienced a no-win situation with a customer where both you and the customer ended up angry and upset? How do we get caught in such situations? What are some effective ways to change our behavior with our difficult customers? Bring your experiences, questions, and ideas to this lively dialogue.