Tips for Calming Down Angry Customers (apart from the complaint resolution process)

When confronted with someone else’s anger, our natural reaction may be to respond to that anger. Often our first reaction to other people’s anger is to defend ourselves, fight back, shut down, run away, cry, scream or try to reason with them. What if, instead of responding to their anger directly, you turned your attention to something positive?

The Broaden and Build Theory of Positive Emotions

Dr. Barbara Fredrickson has spent decades researching the importance of positive emotions (Fredrickson 2001, 2009). In her work she has shown that negative emotions such as anger typically narrow our focus and thinking as part of the fight or flight response. This narrowing of focus allows us to act quickly in threatening situations. By contrast, Dr. Fredrickson has shown that positive emotions have the effect of widening our focus, thereby encouraging us to explore and engage with the world around us. Known as the “Broaden and Build Theory”, research suggests that positive emotions such as happiness and gratitude broaden our thought-action repertoire and build our personal and social resources. 

What does this mean exactly? Broading the thought-action repertoire might be described as increasing the number of mental and behavioral tools that you have at your disposal. The research suggests that when you experience positive emotions you tend to be more creative, more open to information, more flexible and integrative in your thinking, and more efficient. As such, positive emotions provide you with more tools to tackle tasks, problems or challenges that you are facing.

Building personal and social resources simply means that positive emotions tend to make you and others feel good. Feeling good typically increases personal well-being and interpersonal relationships. Therefore, positive emotions help to build personal and social resources that can be drawn on to deal with future challenges.

The “Undoing” Effect of Positive Emotions

In addition to broadening and building, research has shown that positive emotions have an “undoing” effect on negative emotions. Negative emotions such as anger and anxiety activate the autonomic nervous system. This in turn increases heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure, and releases stress hormones into the body. The long-term effects of these physiological reactions should not be under-estimated, as explained by anger expert Dr. Kassinove:

As the anger persists, it will affect many of the body’s systems, such as the cardiovascular, immune, digestive and central nervous systems. This will lead to increased risks of hypertension and stroke, heart disease, gastric ulcers, and bowel diseases, as well as slower wound healing and a possible increased risk of some types of cancers.[1]

While it is true that anger can be framed as a positive emotion or used for positive purposes (such as fighting for justice), the negative impacts of uncontrolled, frequent or prolonged anger are real.

Dr. Fredrickson and her colleagues have shown that positive emotions can “undo” the detrimental effects of negative emotions. For example, in one experiment participants were induced into feeling anxious: they were told that they had 60 seconds to prepare a three minute speech and might be called on to deliver that speech. As expected, participants’ heart rates and blood pressures increased. The participants were then divided into three groups. Group 1 was shown an amusing film clip (a puppy playing with a flower), group 2 was shown a sad film clip (a child crying over his dying father), and Group 3 was shown a neutral film clip (colored sticks arranged in a pattern). Results indicated that participants who watched the amusing film clip, and therefore experienced positive emotions, had their cardiovascular measurements return to baseline more quickly than participants who were shown sad or neutral film clips. In other words, the positive emotions induced by the amusing film clip had the effect of “undoing” the physiological effects of feeling anxious.

Using Positive Emotions to Help Angry Customers Calm Down

The Broaden and Build Theory and the “undoing” effects of positive emotions provide insights into dealing effectively with angry customers. Instead of reacting to a customer’s anger directly, you could experiment with inducing positive emotions in your interaction. Based on Dr. Fredrickson and her colleagues’ research, helping a customer (genuinely) feel more positive emotion could have three important effects:

1.     Broadening the customer’s thought-action repertoire. As explained, positive emotions tend to broaden our focus, make us more open, and increase our creativity. These are all good responses when faced with a confrontation. Helping a customer to broaden their perspective will allow you to avoid blaming and generalizing and to come up with a viable solution to problems together.

2.     Building the customer’s personal and social resources. As described, positive emotions help to build resilience and to strengthen relationships. If an angry customer feels better able to cope with the frustrations they are experiencing, and works with you to build a positive relationship, it is more likely that you will both find a satisfactory resolution to the challenges in front of you.

3.      Undoing the detrimental effects of anger. As outlined, anger typically has the effect of increasing heart rate, blood pressure and levels of stress hormones. By inducing positive emotion in a customer, you will help to undo and reverse these reactions, returning their cardiovascular system to baseline. Once the customer is calm you can work together to resolve their complaints.

There are a myriad of ways to induce positive emotions in others. Two simple tools to experiment with are to use well meaning humour that respects how the customer is feeling and suggests how you can move forward as a team, and to express gratitude towards the customer in an authentic manner. Future articles will expand on these and other techniques for inducing positive emotions in yourself and others.

References

[1] http://apa.org/news/press/releases/2012/05/anger.aspx.

Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218-226. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.56.3.218

Fredrickson, B. (2009). Positivity: Groundbreaking research reveals how to embrace the hidden strength of positive emotions, overcome negativity, and thrive. New York, NY, US: Crown Publishers/Random House.

Fredrickson, B. L., Mancuso, R. A., Branigan, C., & Tugade, M. M. (2000). The undoing effect of positive emotions. Motivation And Emotion, 24(4), 237-258. doi:10.1023/A:1010796329158