Personal Victory

I went on a course last week called  "Dealing with Difficult People" which incidently, I organised for our department as we seem to deal with this type of people regularly...anything more that I would say about these difficult people would have to go in my venting blog...but just isn't worth the effort right now...

The main thing that changed after the session was my attitude. It sunk in for me that really, I am in customer service. The people in my office, the people at the terminals, the people at our Head Office and the customers are actually all my customers. And I have to give good customer service. 

With this in mind let me share an example of what happened this week, where I was able to implement a tiny bit of what I learnt. While I was out the office, on work related matters, someone had an issue. They sent an e-mail to IT support and to me. IT support directed them to me as they could see that I had intentially blocked an account so none of the terminals could use it. IT cc'd me in the e-mail. The user then e-mailed me too. I was still out the office. But only out for a couple of hours, so no 'out-of-office' was deployed on my e-mail, as I'd be back in time to respond to any e-mails sent that day. 

By the time I was back I had a further e-mail from the user, who is 2 or 3 levels below me, all in capitals saying that she has not had a response from me yet, definitely not the way I'd speak to my boss, never mind the way I'd speak to my bosses boss. So, I was presented with my "difficult person".

Happy to say I responded to her in a polite way and it was the cherry on top when she was trying to do something the wrong way so ended up looking stupid as well as rude, while I was left looking polite, in-charge and had my dignity intact... 

I also learnt the "broken down record" technique. I didn't think it was a good technique, but I have discovered that it is. You decide what your answer is going to be to a difficult person and you stick to it. By the time the difficult person has heard the same response 3 times, the average person will understand that the response will not change. And then you can start talking properly or the difficult person will go away. 

Sounds boring in writing, but I really enjoyed going to a course that I could actually walk out of and remember something that I learnt and could implement it with positive effects.