Let's role play interacting with an angry customer.
Overview
Interviewers ask for you to take part in role plays so you can demonstrate how you handle challenging situations in real time. In this case, they are looking for you to demonstrate how you would manage being confronted by an upset customer and what strategies you would use to diffuse the situation and salvage the relationship.
Answer framework
Here’s some advice for answering this question:
Be game for it.
Sales is all about interacting with people, so you should be ready to do an exercise like this. All sales professionals eventually encounter angry customers. Interviewers want to know how you have handled upset customers in the past and how you might manage such situations in the future. Asking you to take part in a role play allows them to see whether you have strategies in place, how you might carry them out when on the spot, and if you will stay relaxed and resolution-focused in the face of a volatile situation.
Listen, empathize, solve—and stay calm.
Act in a way you’d hope someone would take care of a problem of yours. Being successful involves exhibiting strong listening skills and demonstrating that you both understand the problem and the client's feelings. You will want to show that you can think quickly on your feet to find answers and solutions while remaining level-headed and empathetic.
Sample answers
Jenny (CUSTOMER) is the head of operations for a food manufacturer who just learned that a big piece of equipment she bought from Susanna's (SALES PRO) company is slowing down her manufacturing line. Jenny’s upset about this and has just showed up at Susanna’s office to discuss it. CUSTOMER: Susanna, we have a problem here. SALES PRO: Oh goodness, Jenny. I'm sorry to hear that. Can you tell me what's going on? CUSTOMER: Our vacuum-packing equipment is malfunctioning again, and it's making our production line slow down. This is costing us thousands of dollars. I need somebody on your team to get this back up and running or I'm going to take your machines out of our production facilities. SALES PRO: I understand your urgency, Jenny. Let me get some more details on what's malfunctioning so I can share that information with Dwayne Rogers, our sales tech manager. We’ll get a team out there to take care of it as soon as possible. Can I get a few more specifics first? CUSTOMER: The vacuum pump is making this loud noise like eeek-eeek, and we're ending up with air bubbles in all of our products, so we're having to scrap a whole bunch of them. It's a mess. SALES PRO: This is definitely a timely issue, and I will make fixing this my highest priority. CUSTOMER: You know what? If you're thinking about sending that same tech that you sent the last time, think again. That guy didn't know a vacuum pump from a vacuum cleaner. SALES PRO: I completely understand your frustration, Jenny. I'm so sorry this is happening, and I will take care of this for you right away. So, let me get this information to Dwayne, and we will send out our most experienced technician and take care of that. Also, Jenny, once we take care of this initial situation, I would love to send out our director of engineering and our installation manager to the site just to prevent this from ever happening again. CUSTOMER: That would be great. SALES PRO: So, you'd be open to chatting about this once the dust settles? CUSTOMER: Yeah, I would appreciate that. Why this answer worked well:She didn't get defensive and she didn’t interrupt.She demonstrated accountability and empathy and offered to make fixing the situation a priority.She said she'd get back in touch to continue to strengthen the relationship.She used Jenny’s name several times, which made her feel heard.