··· Chatra ↑ All books
§§ Table of Contents − − − − − − − − −
Ultimate Guide to Difficult
Conversations
1. Introduction 2. When you don’t know the answer 3. When you have to transfer a customer to someone else 4. When a customer requests a feature or product 5. When a customer asks you for a favor that you cannot do 6. When there’s something wrong with the delivered product 7. When you close the conversation 8. When a customer is angry 9. When a customer is unwilling to pay 10. When a crisis occurs 11. When you have a frequently complaining customer 12. When customers complain on social media 13. When you have legal issues 14. When you have to deliver bad news 15. When you have an abusive customer 16. When customers cross boundaries 17. When the customer speaks a different language 18. When a customer asks a vague question 19. When customers ask when something is going to be available 20. When you or your fellow agents made a mistake 21. When a customer wants to speak with a manager 22. When you can’t resolve the issue right away 23. When you need to let a customer know that it was their mistake 24. When a customer reaches you by mistake 25. When a customer asks how your product is different from others 26. When a customer is worried about how secure your service is 27. When a customer says that they forgot their password 28. When you want to point a customer to your documentation 29. When a customer violated your terms of service 30. When a customer is not tech-savvy 31. When a customer is right, but your policy is not 32. When a customer sounds like a bigot 33. You’ve got this!

↑ All books ··· Chatra

Legal issues abound in the modern world and, though you wouldn’t expect them to apply to support, they sometimes do! You will occasionally receive messages in your inbox requesting or requiring legal action from your company. This is especially true if you are a company that serves as a note-taking service or has the potential to hold a lot of user-generated content. In that event, you’re likely to get court orders or requests for information. It’s also possible that you’ll get the occasional legal threat from an angry customer about something like downtime or being charged a recurring charge.

Support agents should not be handling this request. Instead, it should be sent to your company’s legal team, or whichever team within your company is responsible for legal requests. The message that you send to the customer should be similar to the one you use for escalation:

Hey there,

Thanks very much for reaching out about this. I can appreciate how important this is to you. I apologize, but I’m not the best equipped to handle this request. I’m going to talk to our legal team, and they should be responding back to you shortly. We really appreciate your patience while we get this sorted.

It’s pretty short and to the point — because there’s no troubleshooting that you could do, even if you wanted to, it’s best to just set entirely clear expectations and let your legal team handle it. After all, it’s what they do best.

← Previous
12.
When customers complain
on social media
Next Chapter →
14.
When you have to deliver bad news
© 2021 Chatra