Customer Service

De-escalate with Calm and Control

Name: De-escalate with Calm and Control
Uploaded: 2025-05-29T18:06:20Z
Duration: 1 min 29 s
Description: When faced with a disrespectful resident, your best tool is calm professionalism. This video teaches technicians how to pause, stay composed, and redirect tense moments by simply asking for clarity. Often, a moment of reflection changes the entire tone—and earns respect without sacrificing yours.

When faced with a disrespectful resident, your best tool is calm professionalism. This video teaches technicians how to pause, stay composed, and redirect tense moments by simply asking for clarity. Often, a moment of reflection changes the entire tone—and earns respect without sacrificing yours.

Soft Skills

Professionalism

Best Practices

Mark Cukro

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Transcript

How do you handle a disrespectful resident or a customer? They come in the office, you knock on the door and immediately they're disrespectful. And for some, that's a tough thing to work with, and it takes a lot of training to be able to do. So it's a learned behavior. And the first thing you do is just be calm.

Just look at the person, have slow, calm, poised body language, and delay your response for a moment or two. So you're not immediately defensive and volleying back and forth and trying to win the argument. Can you and just ask the person, can you say that again or explain to me why you said or think that, and when you make the person repeat it or explain it very often they'll realize what they'll do and they say, oh my goodness, I'm so sorry.

I didn't mean to sound like that. Like, it's okay, we're all human. Instead of getting defensive, most of the time the person will vent frustration. And it comes across to you as being an insult or condescending, and frankly, sometimes it is. But what's going to settle the conflict better? Deescalation or escalating and making it worse?

Deescalation, of course. So calmly, just say, can you say that again and explain what you mean by that? And watch the person change process most often they'll apologize, and if they don't, they'll redirect into a more professional, calm, and poised solution-oriented approach to your conversation.