Lost Tapes Episode 13 - Customer Service

[00:00:04] William Duncan III. Whether you're new to the payroll game or a seasoned veteran, we

[00:00:17] have something for you. People who have a problem for every solution.

[00:00:22] And then another thing we feel is being disappointed when we can't get it. It can be particularly

[00:00:28] strong if we had high hopes or like a favorite brand. If it's a brand that you that usually

[00:00:35] good and it's your favorite, oh my God, I love my brand. I love it. And you call for

[00:00:39] customer service and maybe just you just caught a bad moment and you caught a bad day. Welcome

[00:00:44] back folks. This is an episode of Safe Talk episode 13 and we're talking about customer

[00:00:51] service today. We're going to have some safe conversation. And of course, before

[00:00:56] How are you doing today, sir? I am good, sir. I am a little sad today. I got my fish guide made into sushi.

[00:01:05] Cold sushi yesterday. Two of fish. Yeah, two of fish. Hey, it was a decent year. At least we went to the tournament.

[00:01:12] Hey, we were in it. We had a chance. No, they had a good run, man. They had a good run and as a Floridian now, I hope that they can tweak it to get better.

[00:01:20] I would love to have a local team doing good and root for the Dolphins and whatnot. You know, it was funny. I was watching some of the game and one of the Dolphin fans looked like they were from.

[00:01:30] They literally flew there. They were so wrapped up in blankets. And I was like, oh, they must be like an actual Floridian that went to the game.

[00:01:42] Yeah, you talking about negative 14, negative 20, negative 30. That it felt like negative 27 they said. It felt like negative 27.

[00:01:50] Today here, it feels like negative two. It says. That I've dealt with. I've dealt with up to negative something. Negative 10 was the lowest I've ever been.

[00:02:02] One of the Alaska was like lower. Oh, gosh. Yeah. Wait, where'd you go to Alaska for the military or just FEMA?

[00:02:10] Oh, when you work for. Wow. Yeah, they sent you to Alaska.

[00:02:16] Yeah, bro. I thought we were going to talk about your FEMA days one. I thought my feet were going to freeze off. Oh, my gosh. It was that cold.

[00:02:26] When we talk about negative temperatures, I only think about this moment because I'm about to be in Florida now eight years.

[00:02:34] And I came in January and then the rest of my family came down in July. Yeah.

[00:02:40] And I remember being on the phone with my wife at the beach and it was like 70 something degrees in January, February, whatever.

[00:02:51] I wasn't cold. I was just me. I was by myself, but she's I'm on the bus, babe. It's negative four.

[00:02:59] I was like, what? Oh, I'm so sorry. I like want to get off the phone so I didn't have to tell her where I was and what's going on.

[00:03:07] That's for you, babe. She got to take the bus. She was in nursing school at the time. So it was just like.

[00:03:16] So, anywho, we're talking about customer service today, folks, and what is going to share like these bad examples of customer service and what we need to do is what people can do to fix it.

[00:03:31] And then gosh, I forgot how I prepared. I'm going to talk about and we both can talk about.

[00:03:37] I'm going to talk about like, how does that make us feel like these bad examples?

[00:03:41] And then why does that how does that make us feel? Take it away. Well, what you got for us today.

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[00:04:32] That's T-I-M-E T-R-A-K-GO.com or call 888-321-9922. Let's go.

[00:04:42] Let's go. All right, great sir. I have five inappropriate behavior examples of customer service, right?

[00:04:52] Yes. Customer service. Number one, communication breakdown. Yep. So the example of that is the payroll HR professional responds like almost in a way that's nonchalant.

[00:05:06] Treating the person as if they're not important. You basically are like downplaying the person's inquiry. Discounted.

[00:05:16] No, that's not what I'm talking about. Hey, oh, so this person brings them to your attention and about a paycheck discrepancy and you're lacking patience and understanding with them.

[00:05:25] You're just like whatever. It's like speaking matter factually. Okay, thanks. Bye. Boom. Oh wow. Like being short with somebody. Ah, yes. Abrupt.

[00:05:34] Yes. So when it comes to communication, you want to definitely take advantage of customer service training specifically for your payroll HR staff, emphasizing the effectiveness of communication and the importance of maintaining a positive and helpful tone.

[00:05:51] So like they say smile on the phone. Yeah, exactly. You can feel that and then offer resources such as communication templates or guide interactions to guide interactions, right?

[00:06:03] That's why some of those people that when you call a service and they're like they read off of something that's prompted. Yeah, they have a script.

[00:06:11] But if you can develop it to the point where it doesn't sound so rehearsed and that will make the people feel that could be a way to de-escalate, you know what I'm saying? That situation.

[00:06:22] So number two is inefficient issue resolution, meaning that payroll professionals dismiss a complaint about a tax error or a pay error and fail to recognize the impact on the employee and make that employee feel undervalued.

[00:06:40] I've seen that. I've worked for people where they've been on the phone. There's nothing we can do about it. You're just gonna have to wait.

[00:06:45] It is what it is. Like you'll get it next week. Sorry, hey. And then I remember someone telling the employee like if you had done what you were supposed to do, this wouldn't be a problem.

[00:06:56] Uh-uh. No, not talking to me like that.

[00:06:59] So in this situation, you want to implement a customer focused mindset within the payroll HR team, right? You want to train your staff to actively listen.

[00:07:11] Right. That means you're take you're really taking action to listen to what the person is saying. And so you can hear their concerns and you want to demonstrate empathy.

[00:07:21] Right. Say put yourself in their shoes. Hey, how would I feel if this was me? If someone messed up my check and provide regular updates on the resolution process.

[00:07:30] So if you have to, if you're in payroll HR and you got to do research, keep that communication going.

[00:07:37] Hey, I know I said just following up circling back to let you know I am still working on this. Just give us some time. We'll get back with you soon.

[00:07:45] So that will make them feel like, OK, hey, they haven't forgotten about me because how many times have we seen it?

[00:07:50] You and I in our careers where someone says, oh, I'll get back to you. And it just gets lost in the shuffle of everything.

[00:07:58] And then next thing you know, this person's calling again. Hey, it's been two weeks. What's up? Yeah.

[00:08:04] So we really want to emphasize the importance of promptly addressing financial concerns.

[00:08:12] Number three, lack of accessibility. So pale professionals who blame employees for confusion regarding a new payroll software,

[00:08:23] overlooking the system's complexity and not offering sufficient guidance. I've seen what people in payroll, you should just follow these instructions and that's it.

[00:08:34] You said you send an email like, oh, this is what you do. Hey, I sent you the instructions. I don't know what to tell you if you almost like just dismissing them.

[00:08:41] Right. Yeah. Come on. Like following a theme like this is bad customer service. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:08:47] Yeah. So I've seen where I've been. Unfortunately, I've worked for some people that they would pick up the phone and just hang it up.

[00:08:55] What? Yes. I'm busy. But they were ignored. They had one of the office phones on their desk.

[00:09:02] Yeah. They had one. You could turn the volume down. Oh, yeah. They would turn it all the way down.

[00:09:07] Yeah. They would turn it all the way down. And so their phone would just be ringing. They'd be like, oh, that's that lack of accessibility. Right.

[00:09:12] This person's trying to get an answer to their stuff. Yeah. You don't respond quick enough.

[00:09:17] Yes. You're not making yourself available to these people that can go a long way and not only impact the employee directly, you may impact the company as a result because that may cause that employee to leave.

[00:09:30] I can't get help with my paycheck. Are you kidding me? I'll never forget. I'm not going to say the name of the payroll provider.

[00:09:40] But I know I called one day and they sent the package to the sent the payroll checks to a wrong address. Yes, I called their help center, their help desk.

[00:09:52] And the person on the phone told me it's your fault. Wow. Huh? How is it my fault? You're the one who mailed it out. That's not on us.

[00:10:02] That's not on us. She gave me a real bad attitude and I had to immediately escalate it and blame me. So think about that. You as a payroll professional should never blame you. Even if the employee made a mistake, you don't want to.

[00:10:17] You can call it out, but you have to do it in a delicate way. Hey, the reason that you were underpaid was because of this or because you forgot to punch out or punch in.

[00:10:26] You don't want to come out. Oh, you messed up. So you don't have to wait. Don't come at them like that. You want to promote a culture of support.

[00:10:33] You want to encourage staff to be extremely patient and helpful when guiding employees through their paychecks, their payroll systems.

[00:10:43] And you want to be you want to regularly assess the usability of payroll tools. Right.

[00:10:50] And you want to gather feedback and make necessary improvements. So you want to get we were talking about customer experience, right? Yep. Like customer experience, employee experience fall in the same line because you can look at the employees that you serve as your customers.

[00:11:07] So you want to think about their experience and again, put yourself in their shoes. Another issue that can be faced is inadequate training for your payroll or HR staff. Absolutely.

[00:11:21] So a payroll specialist confidently provides inaccurate information about overtime calculations and that can undermine the employees trust in the payroll process.

[00:11:33] When you give somebody the wrong answer and you're sure about yourself, oh yeah, this is what we this is how it is. And I've done that.

[00:11:40] I've gotten wrong information or I thought the wrong thing and I've get earlier in my career and I've given someone an answer and it was the wrong answer. And it immediately caused the people to look at me, give me the side.

[00:11:52] I okay, does payroll know what they're doing? Does he know what you're doing? It'll be a boss. Yeah. They gave me this answer. How many times have you and I called the service center at one answer?

[00:12:04] One answer. Different answers. You know, call back and get a different answer. That was our strategy. It was like, no, just keep calling back. Yep. Until you get the right answer. You get the one. Get somebody who knows what they're talking about.

[00:12:15] So but how does that make you feel having to do that? We'll talk about that a little bit. Yeah. You know, we got something to think about. So you want to prioritize continuous training for your payroll pros and HR pros.

[00:12:27] Focusing on updates in tax regulations, payroll software and or best practices. You want to establish a system for staff to consult with experts when faced with complex payroll issues. Meaning you want to create a work environment where we as managers are accessible to answer questions for our staff and provide them with the resources that they need so they can give somebody else some accurate information.

[00:12:57] So we want to make sure that the accuracy, the accurate information is consistently provided. If I may, we want to provide a safe place to talk. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

[00:13:12] And then the last thing is you want to avoid ignoring the employee feedback. What's the use of taking a customer or employee survey just to ignore what they say? Oh, for real. Oh, they don't like the way we do it. Oh, it is what it is. This is the system that we got. So sorry for you.

[00:13:31] Your experience like you reported on the news pod user experience, customer experience is what we have to focus on as payroll professionals as well. Yeah. So an example of this would be a payroll pro or HR pro dismissing those employees suggestions for improving the process without investigating their claims.

[00:13:54] Yeah. And that what that can do is you can create a perception of you payroll and HR being indifferent. We don't really don't care what you say. We just did this because we had to. So thanks anyway.

[00:14:07] Yeah, you know, so you want to cultivate a proactive approach to getting feedback within the payroll team. You want to encourage payroll professionals, HR professionals to actively seek and address employee concerns, valuing their input and refining the payroll process.

[00:14:28] And you want to regularly communicate improvements based on employee feedback to enhance transparency and build trust because we had a guest on the main show, Jeremy from Buddy. Yeah, and he spoke to that right. He spoke about how like regularly communicating the improvements can enhance that transparency and build that trust because.

[00:14:51] That's right. Building the trust with your customers and your employees that you serve goes a long way. Even if you do make a mistake, they're like, hey, they're human. These payroll pros, HR pros are human. But I know that they're going to take care of me and fix this problem. And that is the type of environment that you want because we're going to make mistakes.

[00:15:13] We're going to key in something wrong. We're going to misunderstand something and everything like that. It's how we respond to those things and respond to the customers needs that will go a long way. So we want to definitely not ignore any feedback that the customers or the clients or employees give us.

[00:15:31] So that's it, man. I'm gonna pass it back to you. Thank you, sir. As we go as we listen to all those bad examples of customer service, I'm sure we've all been there, right? Just calling our vendor and just getting like the run arounds. And now it's just all that stuff, right?

[00:15:46] So how does it make us feel? How does that make us feel? And one of the things, of course, is frustration. You know what I mean? The most immediate response stemming from inability to get what we need from the service. You just get frustrated. Sometimes you just want to talk to a person. You don't want to go through the phone and press this and do that and go online. Go online. Like now a lot of places just go online. Go to our website. Did you go to our website? Did you go to our website? What?

[00:16:14] You know what I hate is when you have you sign up for these services and they give you a number but you're not able to contact you're not able to get have a human. There's nobody there. Yeah, it's like either chat bots or like automated answering service or something like that. It's just kind of talk to a human customer service.

[00:16:30] Yes, you can't overcomplify things. You can't overcomplify. Hey, I don't know. Overcomplicate things because what happens we get angry. That's another thing how we feel particularly if the service is poor or disrespectful. That cat oof that I love again. I mentioned on all the shows now talking about the cartoon, the stick figure cartoons on Tiktok and IG and they're highlighting.

[00:16:59] HR and they're highlighting all these employee experiences and customer experiences and one of them is customer service where it's like you know the oh no we're not doing that today. You are rude and it's showing that customer service people have a limit also right? It's a balancing act. You can't more bees will honey. You can't go in there spit firing at the first person you talk to because don't you want them to help you? It's not their fault. You can't get you got to put on the other side of it.

[00:17:29] You can't get take that either exactly and that's the thing we get angry if we get disrespected or we getting angry for sure word up right? Most people so pissed off. Yeah, like when you have a bad customer service, you just love it's like.

[00:17:45] Yep, yep, yep and payroll. You don't want no bad customer service from payroll because I heard horror stories. What it was, but Jeremy just said it on the show he's somebody they were threatening to kill us on the phone or something and I've heard that too. I was at a staffing company and the horror story there was like yeah, somebody came through with a bat. They were downstairs with a bat or they were at the thing with a bat. They were scaring the reception and did it out like what? Yeah, cuz you mess with people's money. You can't mess with we are payroll folks. We can't mess with people's money like.

[00:18:15] Yeah, you know how many times like the situation I think I don't know if it was this episode, but the situation where I said I had worked with somebody and they were just hanging up on them. I ended up getting that person and this person was like I'm gonna come blow this up.

[00:18:30] I'm gonna come and I was like I had to deescalate the person because the person the person started popping off the payroll professional started popping off with them and going back and forth with them. No, I'm just like that's not how you handle it. Don't take it personal.

[00:18:43] Yep, now I will say he the person that I did speak to he did disrespect the payroll pro but yeah calling her out of her name still. Yeah, but in that case you need to transfer it to a manager.

[00:18:56] Hey, I'm gonna have to hang up now. Please call back when you are respectful or something. Yeah, those irate. I think I haven't had to deal with an irate customer in a long time.

[00:19:05] I'll give my little example real quick because the last because sometimes, sometimes folks don't want solution. They just want they just like just want to complain. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I saw another video clearly folks we are on we're on social media absorbing things but I like to learn from my social media.

[00:19:26] There was another this was a video and it was like somebody at any event she was getting offended about everything. And then they got to a point where she couldn't get she couldn't figure out what to be offended by the person next to was like you don't even know what to be offended by you trying to figure out something to be offended by. You just want to be mad.

[00:19:46] I just want to be mad. And my point is I was in a customer service situation we were training on a new software we went live on a new software in a retail environment. And I was a trainer on site to support the actual retail salespeople, just in case anything went wrong with the software, we could jump in and help them through the sale from the technical perspective I'm not a salesperson but from the technical part of it.

[00:20:12] And because the environment was a little different that day it was a training day this one customer was like there's all these people in the stores nobody's helping me. And I was like ma'am we're training so a lot of the extra staff are actually the technical person blah blah blah but let me go ahead and get you somebody that can help I was able to go get somebody and she said I don't need your help. We were like I was like what? She just says she needed help. So anywho, it's sometimes folks just like they're like I'm going to go get somebody.

[00:20:42] I just don't want to be just mad. What do I say people who have a problem for every solution? Yes. And then another thing we feel is being disappointed when we can get it when we can it can be particularly strong if we had high hopes or like a favorite brand, if it's somebody if it's a brand that you that usually good and it's your favorite. Oh my god love my brand. I love it. And you call for customer service and maybe just you just caught a bad moment and you caught a bad day was a.

[00:21:12] Imagine if I've never had a bad experience at a Chick-fil-A right? Okay. Never. I've always been good. Yeah. Yeah. But imagine somebody having poor customer service so somebody at Chick-fil-A but who's who are known for having great customer service. Yes. And they're gonna make you be to the point. I'm never going there again. Yeah. Yeah. I'm never buying from them again. And you think about it that's what makes sense about the stat that you share all the time about folks

[00:21:42] like their second at the second paycheck error. They're thinking about leaving the company like a whole company because your paycheck like that's a lot of I don't know what to say stress or responsibility on the payroll that that puts a lot of like responsibility on the payroll people almost unfair but I get what it is right because you can't mess with people's money. And speaking of that it could give us stress dealing with complex issues takes up time issue is difficult or

[00:22:12] it takes a lot of time that gives us stress man. It stresses if you don't get your right money on payday that's stressful. That's we all have pressures in life right. We all have things like whether you if you're a single person and you just have to take care of yourself you still have the stress of taking care of yourself. Yeah. Now if you have a family and other mouths to provide for someone you're taking care of your parent or your sibling or whatever like everybody has life stress already.

[00:22:42] Getting more stress added to that from our payroll pervert person or HR person. Man that can really be debilitating. I got enough going on my personal life. I don't need to add to it. Come on.

[00:22:56] Yep. Yep. And perfectly segues into the last thing is helplessness. If there seems to be no way to get the problem solved or if the situation concerns are not being addressed it is helplessness like Haku. Oh my gosh. These are all the things we feel when we get bad customer service. And again it just makes it really highlights that stat that about leaving a company after two paycheck errors because these are all the feelings that folks go through.

[00:23:26] And it really just does put a big responsibility on us. I think about Adrian Resto again payroll is life and Jeremy Mifsud now he has that same sentiment where he these folks I want to find the right phrase for it. These folks have they they have they they.

[00:23:44] I think that it means so much more to them and not that it doesn't mean but not that it doesn't mean that to me as well. But I just I don't know I just see in different ways and then they see it at a very personal inter intimate level. There's an intimacy there that they have with payroll that they know that the other side of this the product of this is just it's really impacting someone's life.

[00:24:12] You know what I mean. Yeah that's dope. That's dope and that's a way to do it man. And yeah another one here you added distrust at least a distrust for you don't want to you don't want distrust between from your customer. You want your customers to trust you whatever you do because bad customer service can lead to a loss of trust in the company or the brand and it can be hard to rebuild that and given up on the brand and the company like you said earlier was like I'm done with them I ain't going back to that.

[00:24:41] Exactly exactly like I'm done with them. And the thing about it is not just from the payroll you just don't get customer service from the payroll HR department you may get it from the ops department you make you get customer service from all facets of the business.

[00:24:59] Yeah your boss your immediate boss. This is another probably a safe talk where we're talking about management like for me the way I approach being a manager or a leader is just I think that it's a kind of a full circle thing right. Think about it like this like when you first come in entry level you're supporting a company right. You're supporting your customers you're supporting a team.

[00:25:22] You're you got to deliver these whatever right and then hey you grow and you're good and you grow and then you get to a leadership role. But okay so my approach to that leadership role is that it went full circle at that point now you go back to the support part of it but guess who you're supporting your team.

[00:25:42] Yes.

[00:25:43] Your team you know what I mean. That's it. I'm just I approach my leadership as what can I do to make your job easier. What can I do to help you grow to help you get better to further your goals. And there's like there's an infograph and there's visuals out there. Some leaders are pulling and some leaders are pushing.

[00:26:07] And that's I think that's what I prefer to just be pushing and give my teammates whatever they need to be successful.

[00:26:16] Yeah.

[00:26:16] I mean it's not about me anymore. It's not about all my vision. I want this and I want no. What do you guys need. That's what I'm here to do. I'm here to get make your job easier. That's it.

[00:26:25] That's it.

[00:26:26] That's it. Yeah. If I can teach you some things along the way awesome. That's great bonus bonus. But that's the way I approach leadership is just being good customer service to my teammates.

[00:26:39] Servant servant leadership now.

[00:26:40] Servant leadership yeah yeah for sure.

[00:26:45] So that's it for me man. That's how it breaks down. We got these bad examples of customer service and how that makes us feel and it is tough man. This stuff is tough.

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[00:27:57] What are some key takeaways then for you from this? Don't be bad at customer service.

[00:28:04] Yes, no, no that's a good one. Key takeaways is for payroll pros specifically customer service is a big part of our job and I didn't always realize that being in a payroll.

[00:28:21] Something that I said earlier in one of the shows is that payroll and there's a stat out there that I learned this past year right.

[00:28:29] I used to think it didn't matter where payroll sat whether they reported to finance or they reported to HR. It didn't matter. We have the same exact function. We have to work.

[00:28:38] It's the Holy Trinity anyway payroll HR finance. We have to work together anyway regardless. I've been in situations where payroll does not report to either and it's just an ops and whatever and then you still have to work with them.

[00:28:53] But they did a survey and survey says that the only difference is that when payroll is in finance, the customer service lacks a bit because it steers away from the employee experience and it's very matter of fact.

[00:29:11] Whereas when payroll sits on the HR now you lead with the employee experience and a perfect example is you get a payroll error and there was once upon a time where I'm like it's their error. They got to wait till next week.

[00:29:27] They got to wait for the next payroll. I don't care.

[00:29:29] I worked for a couple places that implemented that culture right. And the funny thing is you're right is that and that corporation I reported to finance.

[00:29:41] So they had to say hey we don't want to limit the amount of off cycles that we have. Save some money. Special payrolls that we have because it costs us X, Y and Z. No. Especially if it's their mistake then they can wait. Now if it's our mistake, okay fine.

[00:30:00] If it's on the employee or the manager, nope. Next payroll.

[00:30:03] We had a manager, both of us and I learned things from difficult situations too. I liked what this one manager said. Eight hours or $100 could impact somebody's life in their paycheck.

[00:30:18] And that changed a lot of how I looked at the customer service of it and working under great HR leaders. That really changed how I approached it. She wouldn't want me to call her out but my first name is Lisa.

[00:30:33] My first name is Lisa. Great, great HR leader and I'm not gonna say the last name but y'all can maybe do the research. But anyway she's a great, I just learned a ton under her and now I still have the privilege of being under amazing HR leaders like just still learning from them and that really heightened my customer service awareness.

[00:30:58] We need to lead with customer service. We have to. It's because it's more about, and there's our HRBPs now, they're so customer centric. When they reach out, hey can we fix this today? Right now? For this employee? Can you do this right now for this employee?

[00:31:14] And when you have folks like that, no matter how many thousands of employees they have, they act like that's the only employee ever existing. And that's great customer service. You know what I mean? Yeah man, I think we picked a really good topic to talk about. Thank you for choosing that.

[00:31:35] I think that Walt often curates our topics and gets us going in a direction for, was there an inspiration for you that got this done? Like how did you think about customer service?

[00:31:45] No, we were just, it's a conversation. And something you said just triggered the thought like oh boom we should do customer service because we hadn't really talked about it and you said something and then it just brought the idea up. That's the thing. It just came around naturally and it's something that we hadn't done.

[00:32:03] I think we covered it in the Five Pillars but it's so long ago. And I feel like yeah, we probably need to revisit that episode and see what we can, yeah, but yeah man, that's a great call out man. It's clearly because we've been talking about it for three hours now.

[00:32:19] So, yeah folks, I think that's it man. Like the takeaways, put customer service first because the other things you can work on in the background without impacting people.

[00:32:30] Yeah, because as we know that a lot more companies are focused on the customer experience also known as CX. The customer experience so that is driving a lot of the business decisions that businesses are making.

[00:32:49] So that experience, so they want the experience to be everything for the employee or the customer.

[00:32:57] And I was just gonna say that includes the employee because the employee experience as well. Yeah, exactly.

[00:33:02] Like you said, the employees are our customers. The people that we pay are our customers. You said that so many times.

[00:33:08] So, yeah that's it folks. I hope you're mindful about customer service. It's a pain. Like it's so tough but when you're good at it, you're good at it.

[00:33:20] And I think it does take a little bit of a disconnect to be a good customer service because you can't take it so personal. Yeah, you can't take it so personal.

[00:33:28] You can't just, oh, this is my, what did you say? They call me out my name. They don't know me. No, come on. Especially with money. You gotta, and I think that's how my good, the HR leaders help me with it.

[00:33:41] They're like, Brian, put yourself in their shoes, bro. Their check is messed up. Yeah.

[00:33:48] Yeah, and then if you do have an irate person on the phone, you don't want to, like Brian said, you don't want to take it personally but you don't want to respond in kind either.

[00:33:59] Right? No, no. You don't want to respond. Just listen. Come on. You'll find out that if somebody's just like coming at you and coming at you and coming at you, let them talk in a soft tone.

[00:34:10] Again, I mentioned this in another show. One of my mom's things is that one of the scriptures from the Bible says a soft answer turns away raft.

[00:34:21] That being soft spoken will deescalate someone from being angry and they're like, oh, you know what? This person is actually listening to me. They're remaining calm. They're not engaging in the back and forth.

[00:34:32] You know what? And then you may find, because I've been through that and you may find that a person is apologizing. Hey, I'm sorry. I know I'm not mad at you. I'm just mad at the situation.

[00:34:41] Exactly. I'm not like, oh it's okay. I'm here to help. So let me know. I'll keep you posted. That is what you want to do. That's the ultimate goal is to deescalate and give them reassurance.

[00:34:51] Hey, I'm sorry that it happened and I'm going to take care of you.

[00:34:56] Exactly right. Exactly right. What about you? What's the takeaway? That was it. Got it. No doubt. Yeah, folks. Hope you enjoyed. Thanks for joining us today. We love you. Have a good one.

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[00:35:24] Thank you for being part of our payroll community and thank you for being a part of this journey with us. Until the next time, keep learning, keep growing, and most importantly, keep going.