IT Customer Service Training Tips: How to Show Respect

Respect is a key part of personal identity and relationships. Showing respect means acknowledging someone’s abilities and worth. It involves valuing their feelings and opinions, even if you disagree. It also means treating them equally and giving them the same consideration you would want for yourself.

IT Customer service training teaches you that treating someone with respect is external for you. It’s about your behavior choices when experiencing a customer or co-worker conflict. Sometimes, it’s about not allowing yourself to be dragged down to the level of someone acting in a disrespectful or undignified manner.

How to Show Your IT Customers and Co-Workers Respect

Respect is principle #5 of The 5 Principles of IT Customer Service Success. Along with competence, compassion, empathy, and good listening skills, it’s a key part of the online course The Customer Service Secrets of Successful IT Pros.

It’s easy to talk about respect, but how can you treat someone with respect when you don’t feel respect for that person? How can you treat someone respectfully who disrespects you? Why should you even try?

Let’s start by answering the last question:  Why bother trying to treat someone respectfully who disrespects you?

First, you should hold yourself to a higher standard than the person who acts disrespectfully. Don’t stoop down to their level. There’s an old saying that seems fitting here: When you mud wrestle with a pig, you both get covered in mud, and the pig doesn’t care. Engaging in disrespectful behavior with another person makes both of you look bad, and nothing good comes out of it. As difficult as it can be, strive to maintain your personal dignity and respect, regardless of what’s going on around you.

Second, when you remain calm and dignified, you provide a pathway for the other person to feel heard and respected. Sometimes, that’s all they’re looking for. When you provide that pathway, you give them an opportunity to change their behavior without feeling like they lost some sort of competition or compromised their values. Remember, you don’t have to agree with the other person, nor even like or respect them, to treat them with dignity and respect.

So, if that’s why you should act with dignity and respect, even in disrespectful circumstances, the next question is, “How do I do that?”

Here are seven ways to treat others with respect, regardless of how you feel..

1. Use your manners. This simple technique of saying please, thank you, and you’re welcome shows the other person that you care enough about the relationship to mind your manners. Using your manners is like cracking open a door to allow some sort of relationship to develop between you and the other person. Note: I’m not necessarily talking about a long-lasting or deep relationship. It may be only a short-term technical support relationship, but it will allow you and the other person to communicate and resolve the issue.
2. Be a good listener. This is a basic part of IT customer service training. Listen in a way that makes the other person feel heard and respected. Additionally, listen to understand and remember what the other person is saying. Avoid the temptation to interrupt with your own thoughts and ideas. Being a good listener also includes using active listening skills to understand the other person’s point of view. Active listening means you’re engaged with the other person. You ask questions for clarification. Again, it’s not necessary to agree with them, just try to understand where they’re coming from. If you feel the need to respond, you could say something like, “I don’t agree with you, but thank you for helping me understand where you’re coming from.”
3. Speak well of others. My father said, “What Peter says about Paul says more about Peter than it does about Paul.” When I hear someone engage in name-calling and insults, I often discover that they were actually describing themself more than the other person. Choose your words to lift others up, not to tear them down. Remember, when you speak about others, you may actually be describing yourself!
4. Be on time. Nothing says disrespect like making others wait for you. Think about how you feel when others do that to you. Allow extra time for traffic, construction, and unexpected interruptions. Plan on arriving at your destination five minutes early.
5. Respect boundaries. We all have boundaries. Maybe it’s how close someone can stand to you in a conversation or what questions are too personal. In IT customer service, it may have to do with making changes to an end-user‘s device without checking with them first. For example, I once had an IT guy change my laptop’s default browser without asking me first. That was violating my boundaries. That was treating me disrespectfully.
6. Apologize when you make a mistake. Make it a sincere apology. Say something like, “I’m sorry that I said that. It was hurtful and unnecessary.” A sincere apology is specific and non-conditional.
7. Speak the truth. Follow the Gricean Maxim of Quality. Speak only the truth and never say that for which you lack adequate evidence. Just be honest.

What About Extreme Cases of Disrespect?

What about extreme cases, such as when the other person acts physically threatening toward you? What about when the other person is irrational? Fortunately, those types of situations are rare. Your best action, if that happens, is to remove yourself from the situation as quickly as possible. Your personal safety is paramount. Don’t engage with the other person. Nothing good will come of it. Be sure to let someone else, perhaps your team lead or a colleague, know what happened.

How to Deal With Someone Who Doesn’t Respect Boundaries: 3 Tips for IT Pros 

Sometimes, students have commented to me that they struggle with the idea of treating someone with respect when they don’t feel respect for that person. For example, why should you treat someone who engages in racist, sexist, or violent behavior with respect? You certainly don’t feel respect for someone who acts that way, but you can still choose to hold yourself to a higher standard, to act with dignity and respect yourself. It’s not a matter of condoning bad behavior, nor agreeing with the person who acts that way. It’s a matter of being intentional about your personal behavior choices.

In the film, The Green Mile, Tom Hanks’ character is a death-row prison guard charged with guarding men who committed heinous crimes during the last few days or weeks of their lives before they were to be executed. You could make the argument that the men he guarded were not deserving of respect, due to their terrible crimes, yet Hanks’ character treated each one of them respectfully. He didn’t respect what they’d done, but he chose to behave in a dignified and respectful manner with each of them. It may have been the only time in their lives when they were treated that way. In return, most of them treated him with dignity and respect, but not all of them. And that’s the lesson: When you treat others with dignity and respect, most people will treat you that way, too, but not everyone. You can’t control others, you can only control yourself. Choose to maintain your self-control. Choose to act with dignity and respect.

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