What does this have to do with handling complaints?
Activity:
Spend a minute or two thinking about you as a complainant to a company. Perhaps you couldn’t get your internet connection working and you rang a help line. Perhaps it was a problem that was frustrating you because you couldn’t get what you needed from a government department.
Were you furious when you rang? If not did you become that way by the end of the call?
When you were provided reasons why you couldn’t get immediate resolution, did you get really angry?
Once angry, how much did you take in and understand?
It’s the same for people complaining to us when they are emotionally charged, or worse, feeling threatened. Whilst it’s plain to us why they can’t have what they want, when we reason with them they often just get angrier. The problem we have is that we are using our green brain and they are stuck in their yellow (upset) and/or red (ready to fight) brains. We may as well be speaking an alien language. Their green brain is switched off and their mammalian or reptilian brains are switched on.