At some point, everyone deals with irate customers. If you're in business and you deal with people, you will encounter customer satisfaction issues — even for things beyond your control. So it's really not so much a matter of if as it is when. Even the best companies deal with dissatisfied customers. Sometimes the best of intentions go awry and things fall apart. It's perhaps the starkest reality of business. And no one likes it.

The real question is: How do you make the best of a bad situation? First, you must realize that the sale is more about the seller than the buyer. Therefore, your solution must reflect the customer's interests. The customer wants to know that you are acting on their behalf, not trying to cover your backside. They want you to fix the problem, not the blame. Take responsibility to ensure that the problem is resolved quickly. Speed and sensitivity go a long way toward problem resolution. The customer wants to see that you will do something about his concern. Most reasonable customers will recognize a genuine effort on your part.

Second, get your ego out of it. Irate customers like to yell and threaten. Mostly, they want to vent. They need someone to listen patiently to their complaints. Every mistake in problem resolution situations involves someone's failure to listen patiently and accurately to the other person.

It's tough to remember that your goal is to listen non-defensively to another's criticism when they're "in your face" complaining about your company, your product, or you. The tendency is to get defensive, especially when you're close to the problem. But the most important thing you can do is to try to feel a little empathy for the customer's position.

As in negotiating, you cannot deal with another person's emotions effectively unless you hold in check your emotions. How can you offer a reasoned and measured response when your emotions are raging out of control? No business has the luxury of alienating customers. The consequences are tough to live with.

When buyers purchase from you, there is an element of trust inherent to that relationship. They trust that you will honor your commitments to providing them with everything you have promised. You trust they will pay you on a timely basis. It's understandable that a customer will get upset with a supplier who fails to live up to his end of the bargain. It's equally understandable when the supplier gets frustrated when customers don't live up to their end of the bargain.

Customer service is not rocket science. It's an attitude in which everyone in the organization feels and acts accountable for creating satisfied customers. In an era when most companies in an industry offer good quality, your service and responsiveness may be the only thing that differentiates you from the competition.