You pick-up the phone or a customer walks up to your area and you can tell they are angry. You can almost see the smoke coming out of their ears! What you do in the next minute or two, both mentally and out loud, can determine whether it turns into a full-fledged fire or you are able to make a "service recovery." That means that you are soothing the person and fixing the problem.

Here are three steps to help you do that.

1. Prepare yourself mentally by reminding yourself that it is your responsibility to handle this situation. Even if you will eventually hand it off to another person to solve the problem, you need to first calm the person and make him or her feel that your organization does want to help. You must move from the "It's not my fault" mentality to "What can I do to help?"

2. Apologize. I know, it's not your fault, but at this moment you represent the company and you need to say, "I'm sorry." Saying, "I'm sorry," won't fix the problem, but it will help to defuse the situation. Try something like, "I am so sorry this happened. I know it is frustrating to deal with a situation like this." You can agree with an emotion without admitting fault on the company's part.

But be careful with the phrase, "I understand exactly how you feel." You can't unless you have been through the exact same situation. That remark may make the customer become even angrier.

3. Make the customer feel you are really listening. In person, that means good eye contact, nodding the head, leaning forward or other actions that will make the person feel he is being listened to. If you are on the telephone, use meaningless words, grunts and phrases such as "uh huh," "go on," "mmm," and "oh," to let the person know that you are listening. If they say, "Are you still there?" because you have been silent for so long, you are in trouble. Even if you have been listening, you haven't made them feel that you are.

See if any of these tips work for you and let me know! E-mail me and tell me any other techniques you are successfully using to deal with angry customers - internal or external.

I also deliver customized in-house programs on dealing with difficult, angry people. Please contact me if you would like to discuss one for your organization.