Hiring people with good customer service skills may be more important than companies assume.  Ensuring customer questions and problems don’t evolve into customer rage can be prevented with a few simple steps.

It turns out that 85 percent of consumers will retaliate against a company if their customer service needs are not met. Other examples of consumers striking back:

  • 49 percent of all consumers will stop doing business with that company (men do this more than women)
  • 65 percent of women will ask to speak to a manage…immediately
  • Millennials are three times as likely to vent their frustrations on social media, like Twitter and Facebook compared to Baby Boomers.

What causes customers to be very frustrated and even enraged?  60 percent of customers say speaking with a rude customer service rep makes them enraged.  Other causes include:

  • Speaking with an incompetent CSR (52%)
  • Not reaching a person when they call a company (48%)
  • Getting disconnected (44%)
  • When they have to explain their issue more than once (40%)
  • Being put on hold too long (38%)

What can a company do to soothe angry customers?

  • Respect
  • Knowledge
  • Friendliness
  • Patience
  • Sympathy

All of these characteristics can be assessed before an applicant becomes an employee. Pre employment tests can screen candidates for skills and abilities, positive customer service attitude, frustration tolerance, conscientiousness, listening skills, and much more.  Most of these employee screening assessments take 1o to 15 minutes complete and cost just a few dollars, especially compared to the cost of hiring the wrong employee and losing a customers.  Many companies like Success Performance Solutions offer packages for small business as well as unlimited use annual subscriptions.

Check out this infographic with results of the Five9 survey.

Customer service