Customer Anger or Hate, What Would You Prefer ?!

Antonio Damisio, a leading neuroscientist has confirmed that when people take decisions (about anything) they do so emotionally.

In other words no decision is rational; he carried out different tests or experiments on large number of subjects (all of the subjects have one thing in common, the part of the brain that is responsible for emotions was completely damaged by various accidents etc rendering it useless or in other words they felt no emotions whatsoever) and he confirmed that without emotions the subjects couldn’t take decision whatsoever.

Thus according to this research, we can say rather claim that customer emotions plays vital role in their decision making regarding brand, product/service.

We don’t live in an ideal world, neither our businesses operate in an ideal environment, if there are things that lead to customer satisfaction, loyalty then there are also number of things, reasons that might cause dissatisfaction, anger, hate in your customers (all of these are different kinds of emotions).

And it happens, right, we daily come across those vexed, frustrated customers and that’s why we see anti brand campaigns, activism, like I said we don’t live in an ideal world.

Now as I "claimed" ;p that considering the research of Antonio Damisio it can be "claimed" that emotions play a vital role in decision making, so therefore it sounds reasonable not to overlook emotions. And we all know positive emotions won’t harm you, your business but negative emotions will.

Now when it comes to customers negative emotions, there are basically two important types.

1.      Anger or First Stage
2.      Hatred or Worst Stage

First Stage & Worst Stage

It all starts with customer anger, it is the first stage and if you somehow fail to manage things at this stage it ends up in hatred that is the worst stage, there are no middle stages or types but just first stage and worst stage.

Now when I talked about preference of one over another in the beginning (article title!), I would suggest you to go for anger which is “Constructive Emotion” and never let it get to the worst stage that results in a “Destructive Emotion”.

How is anger a constructive emotion or an emotion that will benefit you or your business and how hatred is destructive emotion that will harm you or your business, well bare with me and just read further (winks!).

Constructive Emotion

The first stage or anger is constructive emotion in a sense, that this emotion can benefit you, your business if you do the right things at this stage. Anger in actual is a customer feedback in strong words about what they really don’t like about your brand, product/service or what they really want from your brand, product/service.

Once you work on it, providing what customer really want from your brand, product/service you will naturally earn that customer trust, support and loyalty. It is as simple as that.

Destructive Emotion                 

To understand how hatred is a destructive emotion, let’s first get through what changes a constructive emotion or anger into a destructive emotion or hatred (worst stage).

There are two common causes of customer hatred for your brand, product/service.

1.      When You Don’t Agree
2.      When You Repeat

1.      When You Don’t Agree

When they are rightly angry and you don’t listen to them, agree with them when they really want you to admit, to agree so on and so forth. Such behavior would clearly cultivate hatred in your customers against you, your business and whatever it offers.

2.      When You Repeat

When you repeat the cause of anger over and over, like by doing things instead of what your customers really desires, prefers or want you to do. This leads to hate,  as Socrates once said “From deepest desires often comes the deadliest hate”.

And that hate leads him/her to abandon you, boycott you, your business, take part in anti brand activism. Advocates against you, your brand all around, at every forum they find so on and so forth, no wonder hate is a great motivator.

All such activities carried out by your dissatisfied customers are really destructive and imagine the consequences, by having small business and with few dozen dissatisfied customers filled with contempt.

Now if you agree and don’t repeat you will be in good position to stop things moving from first stage to worst stage and thus benefiting from constructive emotion that would result in customer satisfaction, loyalty, advocacy and many more benefits in the longer run.

That's it, over to you guys, share your ideas on how can we manage angry customers, what should we do and how should we do it, when things get to worst stage.

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