How to deal with clients: Patience

When dealing with clients/customers we have to deal with crap situations that test our patience levels and we have to find a balance between good customer service and being a pushover. It’s important to know how to be patient, so that you can provide quality customer service as well as learn how to control your emotions.

1. What’s the rush? A lot of times impatience is set in because you’re in a hurry. Force yourself to slow down and try to figure out why. Are you trying to multitask too much or have a pressing deadline? If you’re overwhelmed, try cutting something out or re-arranging your task list before reacting how you normally would. Try to spread out your tasks so that you’re focused on one thing at a time, this is easiest with task manager.
2. What’s your trigger? Find out what really sets you off, impatience is often masked by other emotions such as anxiousness, anger, bitterness, etc and needs to be identified in order to be fixed. Find out the events, people, or circumstances that cause you to snap and then try and trace it to impatience.
3. Do you have attitude? At times, we just have bad attitude that causes us to be impatient. Sometimes, you have to simply force yourself to cool down. I recommend learning some anger management techniques as these generally apply to being patient and understanding as well. Learning to calm yourself in a frustrating situation is one of the most valuable and important assets you can have, especially when it comes to customer or client relations
4. Are your thoughts organized? Getting organized can greatly reduce impatience almost as soon as you start. When you sit down and spend time to refine, collect and re-arrange your thoughts you begin to let go of the other emotions caught up in your impatience and can logically analyze and resolve conflicts.
5. Are you making the same mistakes? One of the keys to solving your impatience is to identify and correct patterns in behavior. Look for patterns. Being aware of your impatience also gives you a chance to learn from it and perhaps uncover a relationship or circumstance that is simply not healthy or constructive, and that you may have the power to change. Figure that out, and you can then think logically about the problem issue and decide whether or not your impatience is warranted or helpful. It usually isn’t, but when it is you can then figure out ways to fix the root problem rather than simply feeling stressed about it.