Every CSM has faced a day or two that felt like a minefield of tough conversations and tricky interpersonal situations. From tense renewal negotiations to rivalry with other departments to frustrated customers, there’s no shortage of conflict in customer success.
It can be tricky to deal with, says customer success trainer and coach Ryan Johansen, but avoiding conflict or getting it wrong will only lead to more stress—not to mention missed growth opportunities and damaged relationships.
The good news is that handling tough conversations is a skill you can—and should—develop like any other. This month, Ryan shared his practical strategies and mindset-building tips for handling conflict in a wildly popular ChurnZero webinar, which you can watch in full below.
Keep reading after the video to find Ryan’s answers to our attendees’ questions.
Handling conflict in customer success: Q&A with Ryan Johansen.
Our webinar dug into how to get comfortable with difficult conversations, how to identify the biggest obstacles to agreement and overcome them, how to advocate for yourself, and how to create win-win situations out of conflicts. Here’s what attendees wanted to know at the end.
Q: How do you recommend handling situations where there’s a conflict between what the customer wants, and what your own company thinks is best.
A: I think we all feel this one at times, and it’s one of the most challenging situations.
Our job as CSMs is to advocate for our customers, and do the right thing, which means talking your boss about it, which makes for a textbook difficult conversation. A lot of the principles we discussed in the webinar will work here. Make a strong case for your customer. Try to act as a broker between your customer and your company.
But, sometimes there’s disagreement as it gets escalated – and sometimes, the truth is that there’s only so much you can do within your organization. In these cases, as long as you can put your head on your pillow knowing that you did everything you could, it’s okay. And the same in reverse; if you can imagine your CEO watching the conversation, and seeing that you handled it by the book, kindly and respectfully, then it’s fine.
Q: How do you handle customers who always copy the CEO on every email?
A: Once, I had a $5,000 renewal which was absolutely horrible. I did everything by the book. I tried to be respectful. I kept everything as professional as possible. And, no matter what I told this person, he became extremely upset to the point where he was reaching out to my founder and other people.
Ultimately, as you are professional and respectful, and do things by the book, you are not responsible for someone else’s reaction.
Q: What are your best tips to handle conflict with customers who are difficult and just want to yell at you?
A: If a customer is yelling at you? You need to have a conversation where you let them know that this is a professional relationship, and that you can’t work together like this. You’ll want to escalate it to your boss too. It should be a clear boundary that you can’t have a relationship like that. That’s not cool.
Related: What causes stress in customer success teams, and why?
Q: After a tough conversation, what steps do you recommend to ensure that the relationship moves forward positively afterwards?
A: An out-of-of the box idea—and I know a lot of us work remotely—but if you can go get lunch or a coffee with that person, or do something else that’s not work-related where you get to know each other as humans, it can be incredibly powerful.
Q: How do you not take things personally when a customer is upset?
A: That used to be a challenge for me. I hate losing, so anytime I had churn, I took it so personally and it ruined my weekend.
Then, I was talking to someone who worked for me, who was also a superstar athlete. She told me about her hockey team’s approach of: if they did our best, but came up short, or a break didn’t go their way, they would still be happy about it because they gave it their absolute all.
As long as you’re doing things the right way, you don’t need to take it home with you—although I’ll admit it’s easier said than done.
Q: What are your thoughts on how to share feedback with an employee who reacted defensively or counter-productively on a customer call because they got too heated?
A: Start the conversation with the facts, not the feelings, and try to keep it there. “This is what happened,” not “This is how we felt about it.” It makes a huge difference.
Q: What happens when you have a customer who won’t accept an alternative approach—who keeps pushing back to their initial ask and isn’t satisfied with what you can offer?
A: Take the time to understand what’s driving the request.
When I was newer in my career, someone would ask about a feature and I’d reply: “yes, I can do that”. Then, I watched my leader. He would ask—every time—why it was important. What are you trying to do? Are there other ways to get there? Or, to use a math analogy, how else can we get to 20 without doing 15 plus 5?
So, try to position the conversation around the outcome your customer is looking for. Not the specific way they want to get there, but the mutual goal of the destination, and how you might help them get there in a different way.
Related: How customer success leaders can help their teams manage stress.
Q: How do you handle telling a customer they might be a bad fit for your product?
A: Your sales rep should have done that! But, of course, this is an issue that causes a lot of problems in CS. I would recommend talking with your commercial person to get an understanding of the customer’s history and what they were looking to buy for.
With the customer… again, could you frame things in terms of them being insistent on doing something one way? Being a CSM is a lot like being a personal trainer, where if you’re working with someone who’s saying: I don’t want to run, I don’t want to do abs, I don’t want to lift… nothing good is going to happen there.
Q: How do you decide when it’s time to escalate a conversation to higher management? And what’s the best way to make that transition?
A: I always try to solve things one-to-one first. If one person escalates right away without giving the other a chance, it can really set things back.
I’ve also been in those situations where you know, early, that the leaderships of both parties have to be involved. My line in the sand is: if I can’t resolve it with the other person, it’s time to escalate. And, once again, if you do everything by the book, and with respect, you’ve got nothing to worry about.
Interested in hearing more from Ryan Johansen and ChurnZero? Check out our webinars on how to become a more effective CSM, and how to lead a CS team with confidence as a first-time manager.
