If you approach a customer support ticket, a negative review, a cancellation request with a defensive mindset, you will always fail.

When people approach you with a problem, they are not interested in hearing that it’s not your fault. They might be seeking a solution, a clean cut, a way to rant. Never will they want to hear a closing statement from your defence attorney.

What do you want to achieve and what do they want to achieve are two important things to consider in these cases.

You have a system to monitor your customers opinions because you want to know when things go wrong and try to remedy that, possibly changing people’s attitude towards your brand. Then why is it rarely your fault, why is confrontation often the go-to tactic, why is empathy the last thing that’s being taught to your people?

And on the other hand, customers do very often reach out because they care and they want to share. They are unsure about what happened, they are hurt because things did not work out as they expected, they want to know they have not done a terrible choice.

So, when you see a customer support ticket, a negative review, a cancellation request, keep in mind you are not there to prove a point.

You are just there to help the other move forward.