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Showerthought: I used to defend the smile-and-nod at the register, but a man in Tulsa flipped my view on arguing with customers
I always thought you just smile through whatever a customer throws at you because fighting back never helps. Last Tuesday a guy at my store in Tulsa screamed about a $12 return for 20 minutes while I nodded along, and it drained me way worse than the one time a coworker calmly said "sir, I can't do that" and held her ground. The pushback ended the thing in 3 minutes instead of dragging it out, and she still got a survey score of 9. So for anyone working retail, do you shut it down early or keep nodding until they run out of steam?
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sean7828d ago
Reading about this whole thing somewhere, I remember a study that said letting a customer vent just makes them ramp up because they feel like they're winning. The longer you stand there nodding, the more time they have to build up steam and get an audience going. Saying "I can't do that" flat out cuts the fuel off, even if they get madder for a second. There's a clip I saw from some retail worker saying the same thing, that a short no beats a long maybe every single time.
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