How to Handle an Insane Customer

What do you do when the customer truly goes over the line? Here's a real-life situation that happened to one of Sales Machine's regular readers. It started as a typical "disgruntled customer" encounter but then escalated as follows:

I did my best to let the person vent by acquiescing, but when it became clear he wasn't going to change his approach, I simply stopped the conversation, let the man know that I wasn't going to take his abuse any longer and that if he wanted my assistance I would be glad to assist him, but only if he acted in a civil and professional manner.
Surprisingly he did not relent. I ended the meeting and offered the phone number of our CEO/owner if he cared to call and discuss his issues further. He continued the abuse, following me in the halls and actually interrupting a separate meeting with another client from the same firm, calling me an idiot and other choice words. I simply acted as if he weren't in the room.

You shouldn't have been walking into this situation in the first place. Either you didn't research the client before making the sales call, or the previous rep didn't bother to tell your company that there were some potential problems, or your sales support team didn't log a complaint. Something's broken in your firm, or you would have known to expect at least some kind of problem.

However, you handled the situation appropriately at the beginning of the encounter by following the prescription that I laid out in the post "How to Cope with a Rude Customer." I'm not sure whether you raised your intensity level, but you drew boundaries and stuck to them. Good work. If the client had been basically sane, everything would have been fine.

Where you went wrong is how you handled the situation after it was clear that the client was actually crazy. The red flag was when he followed you down the hall, and the confirming sign was when he interrupted your second meeting. That's genuine nutty behavior.

At that point, you should have stood up, told the second client that you'd call back another time, and then simply left the building. Sitting there and acting as if the crazy client wasn't in the room was, in fact, passive aggressive behavior on your part and undoubtedly fueled his anger further. And certainly it was impossible to get any actual work done with the second client.

Once free of the building, then you can consider whether or not you want to work with that firm in the future. Firms that tolerate crazy behavior always have dysfunctional corporate cultures. In all likelihood, that firm will, sooner or later, do something that screws you up, like not paying its bills, or publicly trashing your firm. They're probably not worth the effort.

If you do decide that it's worth working with them, then you should call the second client and discuss the situation. You are owed an apology, if not from the nutcase, at least from the second client, who should have thrown the nutcase out of his office. (In all likelihood, the second client is scared of the nutcase.)

Assuming you get the apology, from that point on you schedule your sales calls at times when the nutcase isn't in the office or make the sales calls on neutral ground, like a local restaurant. There are three good reasons for this:

1. Self Protection. The nutcase might actually become violent and you shouldn't be forced to put your physical well-being at risk.
2. Self Respect. By refusing to be around the nutcase in the future, you send a message that you will not be treated unprofessionally.
3. Helping the Customer. Ostracizing the nutcase sends a message to the customer's management that they've got a personnel problem.

READERS: Any further advice?

FOR MORE ON THIS SEE:

• How to Cope with a Rude Customer
• My Customer is a Big Bully! HELP!