Every business has difficult customers. Some will be worse than others. Occasionally, even if you do not want to, you just have to pick up the telephone and speak with them.

Those customers which are particular hard to deal with and make your blood boil, require particular care during our telephone contact.

So what can we do to maintain our professionalism and get paid?

To start the process, I believe you need to make the contact when you feel you are in control of your emotions or it feels right to make the call. In every day, there will be times when you feel in a good emotional state and this is the time to make the call.

Try never to make the telephone call in an aggrieved state of mind biased against the customer, irrespectively of what has caused the bias. The reasons for the bias may be due to the customer's business practices which you believe are unfair and unreasonable. The problem is once these types of thoughts get into your head, it is really difficult to manage your feelings when talking with the customer.

Therefore, being in a clinical mode and feeling emotionally strong are when it is best to contact the difficult customer.

However at times, and despite all your preparations, sometimes your emotions take over. Whilst not an ideal situation, we must remember we are but human. Therefore although these situations are not ideal, they will occur from time to time.

Consequently knowing there may be an occasional situation when your emotions get the better of you, means you can prepare strategies to deal with such situations.

In my view, the best way of dealing with these situations is to try to finish up the call as quickly as possible without saying anything too damaging to your cause. 

I know how hard it is to deal with difficult customers and keep my emotions in check from a recent experience. Luckily I had learnt to recognise the signs and was able to keep the discussion on track. It is my belief, you too can learn to overcome your emotions in such situations and make professional telephone calls to difficult customers.