What Service people can learn from “The Princess & the Pea”

Difficult Customers. Every Service professional faces them. But what if the real challenge lies not with the Customer, but with how we respond to difficult Customer situations?

Helping Service professionals understand how to better manage these difficult Customer situations isn’t a nice to have luxury – it’s a must have.

Especially if you believe that taking care of your people is a first step to help your people take care of your Customers.

I share the fairy tale, The Princess and the Pea, in our training sessions

When I teach people how to better manage difficult Customer situations, I share the fairy tale, “The Princess & the Pea” by Hans Christian Andersen.

Fairy tales often hold surprising wisdom, and this one contains a lesson about sensitivity that every Service professional can learn from.

The story of The Princess & The Pea

In the story of The Princess and the Pea, a Prince – supported by his interfering mother the Queen – seeks to find and marry a genuine Princess.

Though there were a lot of young ladies that claimed to be Princesses out there, something seemed to be off with each one.

It was hard to determine whether any of them were, in fact, a real Princess.

One night, during a severe thunderstorm, there was a knock at the castle door.

Outside, there stood a young lady. Wet and dripping she asked for shelter for the night.

The Prince’s mother, the Queen, decided to test if this was indeed a real Princess.

“We’ll soon find out,” she said to herself.

She went into an empty bedroom in the castle, took all the bedding off the bed and laid a pea in the middle of the bottom-most mattress.

Then she put 20 mattresses on top of the pea, and 20 comforters on top of the mattresses for good measure.

“Here you go young lady”, she said, welcoming the young lady into the bedroom.

“You can sleep here.”

The next morning…

The next morning, the King, Queen and Prince entered the bedroom where the young lady had slept and the Queen asked, “How did you sleep?”

To which the young lady replied –

“Oh, very badly!”

“I have scarcely closed my eyes all night…

Heaven only knows what was in the bed, but I was lying on something so hard that today I am black and blue all over!”

That was all the Queen – and the Prince – had to hear.

They now knew that this young lady in front of them was a indeed a genuine Princess.

Only a real Princess could be that sensitive.

https://www.omnitouchinternational.com/how-to-help-your-contact-centre-agents-improve-their-performance/

So how does this apply to Service people?

When we teach how to deal with difficult Customer situations, we ask Participants to define or describe a difficult Customer situation they face in their work.

Common answers we hear from Participants sound like this –

Our Customers are so demanding…
Why do Customers repeat the same thing over and over?
Our Customers just refuse to understand…
Why are our Customers so annoying?

Then I ask –

“Ok and thanks for those answers. You clearly have perceptions about your Customers in your minds.

Can I ask – do you have any fear for your physical safety as a result of what you just described?”

“Um…no…not at all.”

“Ok. Did you experience any emotional damage as a result of what you just described?”

“Not really…it’s just irritating.”

Then I ask perhaps the most important question.

“Did this Customer do anything wrong?” (the room usually goes quiet here)

And then multiple people will all jump in and say –

“No Dan, they didn’t do anything wrong.”

This moment of self-reflectionis important.

While we may not have liked what that Customer said or did, that Customer didn’t do anything wrong.

They don’t deserve to be ‘punished’.

Which now leads us to the lesson

So now I move the conversation to the lesson.

“Then is it possible that perhaps, in this moment, we’re being a little bit too sensitive?

That perhaps we’re responding a bit like the Princess who slept on a pea?”

Usually we all laugh here. Really.

Irritating Customers – and irritating people in general – are a part of life’s rich tapestry.

And irritation is a very personal lens.

What I find irritating, such as slow talkers or people who chew with their mouth open, may not bother you at all.

And what you find irritating, such as people who ask the same question over and over, doesn’t bother me at all.

Because I see this as an invitation and opportunity to reassure.

So at this point I sum it up, rather bluntly, and say –

“Then guess what. We’ve got to suck it up and serve. Our Customer hasn’t done anything wrong.

And let’s be honest with ourselves.

If we’re sitting here thinking how terrible or annoying this Customer in front of us is, don’t you think that our negative feelings are going to slip in and pollute the interaction?”

(you can imagine head nodding here).

I remember in one private training session, the Head of CX for a bank was sitting in the room as an observer.

At the break she came up and said to me –

You know, I’ve never heard the idea of irritating Customers expressed that way before.

But you’re right. And I accept the blunt way you put it.

Just because we may personally not like something our Customers says or the way they say it, that doesn’t mean our Customer did anything wrong.

It’s our job to suck it up and serve. We’re not in this role to judge our Customers.

We’re here to help and support them.

The role of emotional maturity

In the world of Customer Service – and working life in general – you’re bound to come across people that you find irritating or unpleasant in some way.

I’ve found that folks who’ve actively worked on their emotional maturity recognize the power of pause.

Instead of jumping to an emotional reaction – “That Customer is annoying!” – these folks take a a breath, size up the situation and respond in a way that’s designed to move the conversation forward.

Or at least in a way that doesn’t make things worse.

Pausing to help you choose the right response – especially in the world of Service – not only leads to a better outcome.

It will likely help you live a better life.

A quick thought on ‘abuse’

This is not an article about ‘abusive’ Customers.

Perhaps the biggest mindset change we see when we teach dealing with difficult Customer situations is this –

What some Frontliners label as ‘abuse’ is actually not abuse. It can simply be a behavior a Frontline does not like.

For example, a correspondence Team once told us that they were abused when the Customer used exclamation points in their written correspondence. Or when the Customer used red font in their email.

Just because we don’t like a specific Customer behavior – they cut us off, they don’t listen, they use red font in their email, they tap their fingers on the counter (the list goes on and on) – that doesn’t mean that their behavior is abusive.

Abuse is a very serious word. With very serious sequences and sets of actions to take.

So one of the most important steps Customer Service leadership must take is to specifically define what abuse is at their organization – and what it isn’t.

To make it crystal clear for dozens, hundreds and sometimes thousands of Customer Service employees.

Fortunately, the rate(s) of abuse are remarkably low across industries.

With the exception of certain industries such as law enforcement, working in a drug or alcohol rehabilitation treatment, or inside prison systems, Frontliners typically tell me that only 1 out of 100 or even less than 1 out of 100 of their Customer interactions would qualify as ‘abusive’.

So when I teach, I always keep the categories of ‘abuse’ and ‘irritating’ separate. Because they’re not the same.