Episode #152: How To Disagree But Still Keep Your Customer

The Customer is King. How do you say “no” to the King? In ancient times, if you said “no” to the King, you would lose your head. Keep your head - learn how to say “no” to the King in the modern era. It is even worse in Japan because the customer isn’t King, the customer here is God! However, the customer is not always right. Sometimes they are being unreasonable or they are requesting things which are beyond our scope to fulfill. There are times when we have to say “no” to the customer and not accept their demands. How do we disagree with the customer and still maintain our good relationship?

We need to practice some self-awareness first. Are there certain words or phrases, that cause a strong negative reaction within us? If we know that when we hear words like “that is impossible” or “that is nonsense” and it triggers a strong defensive attitude inside us, we need to recognize that fact so we can control our reaction. We need to stop the release of fight or flight chemicals and allow the brain to take over.

When we hear something from the customer we know is going to be a problem or trouble, we must stop ourselves from wanting to respond immediately. We need to firstly consider why we believe the opposite of what they say to be true. We have a different opinion, but why is that? What do we think, why do we think that, what is the evidence to support our viewpoint? We have to accept that we might be wrong and the customer is correct, rather than just disregarding the customer’s opinion, because we haven’t thought of that possibility before or we haven’t done that procedure before.

Here are 6 rules for disagreeing agreeably with customers:

1. Give The Benefit Of The Doubt
Give the customer the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they are right and we are wrong? Don’t just reject what they say out if hand.

2. Really Listen
Listen and really try and understand why they hold that opinion. We also want to feedback that we have heard what they have said and that we are genuinely trying to see things from their point of view.

3. Stay Calm
We have to commit to react unemotionally. We need to stay very calm, no matter how upset or angry the customer becomes.

4. Use A Cushion
We use a cushion to give ourselves thinking time.

5. No “Buts”
We eliminate words like “but”, “however’ from our responses and we replace them with the word “and”.

6. Provide Context
We respond by telling a short story that delivers the context of why we believe what we believe. We don’t go into providing the evidence of our beliefs without first providing the context.

We need to use a story to tell the background that led us to the belief that we hold to be true or which we consider to be the best option. Only after delivering the context as a story, do we state our opinion. If we state our opinion immediately, the customer will reject it because they don’t have any context against which to judge whether what we are saying is reasonable or not.

For example, if the customer was very unhappy about the delivery time not being the next day, we need to give them some context as to why we can’t do it the next day.

Context

We might say something like this, as we tell the story:

“I was talking to Suzuki san in our HR division the other day at our headquarters.

He told me that delivery issues have become quite a topic in Japan. He said the number of young people has halved in the last twenty years and that the projections are that they will halve again over the next forty years.

This is going to have a big impact on all industries in Japan. He said, it means that young people are going to be in short supply.

We see it already because jobs like delivery drivers are becoming harder to fill. He told me it now taken us three times as long as it used to, to hire people for these jobs.

He said it is a nightmare if they leave because it takes many months to replace them.

Every industry will start to suffer these same problems but the delivery sector is feeling the problem right now. Amazon has created a lot of pressure on the delivery sector.

They are being forced to move away from same day or next day delivery as a result, because the delivery teams can’t take the pressure due to understaffing”.

Having told that short story, we have provided context as to why we also can’t maintain the same delivery systems as in the past and the customer is more likely to understand our situation and accept what we are proposing.

Recommendation

At this point, we would say,

“We really want to maintain the same delivery timings as before, but frankly the change in Japan’s demographics is now making all of us accept we need to factor in longer delivery times. Please be understanding of our position, we have no choice any more”.

If we just said we can’t do it, we could easily get into an argument with the customer about how they believe we are going to have to do it, whether we like it or not.

We can avoid that type of response if we follow the six steps. So thinking about the likely situations that come up in your business, how will you apply what your learnt today in your daily work? Thinking back was there any situation where you provided context through a story for explaining why you couldn’t do what the customer wanted? How did it go? If it went well, then what were the success factors that you can apply to other situations? If it didn’t go well, what can you do to improve your delivery?

Action Steps

1. Give The Benefit Of The Doubt
2. Really Listen
3. Stay Calm
4. Use A Cushion
5. No “Buts”
6. Provide Context