Dealing with Angry People

Have I mentioned I work on phones? Specifically, one of my jobs is dealing with angry customers. This is, again, something that would have been at the very bottom of the list of jobs that I wanted to have. It would also have been at the very bottom of the kind of job that I think I could do.

I have autism. High-functioning autism that means that I am a kind of autistic savant. What I am not is neurotypically adept at social interactions. I don’t do well with subtle. I don’t read facial expressions or body language easily. I don’t understand hints or metaphoric language and I tend to take things literally. That means that I spent most of my teenage and young adult years saying exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time to truly embarrass myself in every possible way.

I was miserable at interviews because I blurted out weird “truths” I felt obliged to disclose. I believed I had no friends because I didn’t know how to do “friending” and when I did get a friend here and there, some of them treated me very badly for years before I realized what was going on. This is all to say that I’m too blunt, too honest, and too socially inept for many public-facing positions. I was a writer who could communicate only when given time enough to weigh every word carefully. I don’t do live conversation well. Or so I believed.

But I’ve managed to do well enough at my job that I keep getting promoted. One of my friends told me recently that maybe I have my job as a supervisor, dealing with angry customers, because I'm actually really good at dealing with angry customers. How is this possible? How could an autistic person figure out how to deal with angry neurotypical people?

For one thing, there’s training. For another, there’s the assumption that all of us deal with it, and that you just get used to it and figure out how to manage the situation.

Weirdly, I found myself coaching another customer service person about how to deal with angry customers and I distilled it to a few simple steps:

1. Let them be angry.

2. Listen to what they're actually saying.

3. Do not take their anger personally.

4. Suggest next steps for dealing with the problem.

That's it. There are a few nuances I could add. Sometimes I have a feeling for what will work and what won't work with angry customers. For instance, some people are just dead set on taking no responsibility. When that becomes clear, it's not super useful to keep arguing with them about that. Move to #4.

But one of the weirdest things has started happening to me. I find that angry customers, when given a chance to be angry, stop being angry and thank me for helping them and almost always apologize for being rude. And then many of them actually do take responsibility for their part in the problem.

Sometimes I feel like customer service is the cheap version of therapy. People need to vent. We are the ones they vent to. They feel a kind of catharsis afterward. Sometimes they feel embarrassed or sad after they’ve revealed their vulnerabilities so clearly.

Not cutting them off and not making the assumption that you know everything already can be useful. Sometimes the assumptions are even wrong. But letting them be heard means they wind down after a while. I don’t even have to do the annoying, “I can understand how you’re feeling” thing as much if I just actually listen and say, Wow! Or “Ouch, that hurts.”

Like a therapist, you can sometimes give them next steps to moving forward. If you can do it in as cool and rational way as possible, it helps them be less afraid. I kind of think it’s like talking a child through a new task. You can do this. I’ll help explain how. And then also remind them that it’s not like they’re the first person on the planet to be in this situation. Other people have been there, and there’s a way through (or out). Encouragement and positivity (not false) can win the end of such a call.