Ebay PowerSeller

Tips:
1. Mind your manners.
2. If you normally use incorrect grammar, try to correct it while around customers. Don’t speak in slang or use sarcasm as humor with customers.
3. Be careful if you need to correct customers! Do not volley insults.

1. Be positive, all the time. The last heading said to be positive, not look positive. As mentioned in Step 1, keep a slight smile and remember that a difficult customer has probably just had a difficult day or gotten bad news. It is possible that s/he’s just a jerk, but that’s pretty rare. Try to help smooth his or her ruffled feathers by being helpful and attentive, and keeping a compassionate attitude toward him or her, and a sense of humor about the whole thing.

2. Respond to cursing or direct insults carefully. You should not be required to take cursing or insults from anyone, even your boss. If a customer is abusive to you, stop him right there. Don’t return cursing with cursing, don’t return an insult for an insult. Just say something like, “Pardon me, but I won’t accept being spoken to this way. I will ask you to be civil to me, or leave.” If the customer fumes and stomps out, be sure to contact your supervisor and let him know you had an altercation with a customer. That should be acceptable.

• 3. Don’t jump at them right away. Maybe they are having a bad day. Offer to help them find what they’re looking for. If they ask (or command) you to do something, assuming it is a reasonable request, do it with a smile and a willing attitude. Just being helpful and soothing may help improve their mood and the way they treat you.
• 4. Never forget that the customer often has a valid reason to complain, and that the original irritation may have been aggrevated by thirty minutes on hold with third-rate music. Assume the best and keep in mind that you, too, will occasionally be on the customer’s end of a complaint: Do unto others…

5. Accept criticism, but don’t absorb it. One main reason why humans just can’t seem to accept criticism is because we feel the critic is wrong. Before you dismiss the criticism out of hand, consider whether or not the customer might be right. Even if the tone is sharp, the criticism could be accurate. Either way, don’t take the remarks personally, or to heart. Stay cool, thank the customer for his or her input, and let them know you’ll take that comment directly to your supervisor.

• 6. Remember the old saying, the customer is always right? Well, that’s not true, as anyone with any experience in a retail situation knows. The truth is that the customer is almost always lying. Once you realize that, you can handle most anything with a nice sense of humor and a cool and collected persona that will win over the most difficult situation. The trick is to make the customer believe that you are treating him as if he is actually in the right, at least partly. Usually situations where you will need this skill most is when you have a returned item. Rather than telling the truth, they frequently come in telling outlandish stories, and when you ask questions (just trying to figure out what went wrong), it shoots holes in their stories and they get defensive and begin getting angry, because they know they’re about to get caught.