Dealing with difficult customers:

Just hearing the words “customer service” can make retailers and consumers cringe. Yet providing quality customer care is often what differentiates a company from its rivals. And when you have an angry customer, your skills (and patience) are put to the test. Time to pass that test with flying colors.

“With the digital disruption we’re having today, customer loyalty is really dropping for a lot of businesses,” says John DiJulius, a customer service consultant and author of The Relationship Economy: Building Stronger Customer Connections in the Digital Age. “The best differentiator you can make is to form an emotional connection with your customer. And when you think about the great customer service giants that are out there—[companies like] Disney, Southwest, Nordstrom, Apple—those companies do drop the ball on occasion, but when they make a mistake they make it right for their customers.”

Lee Cockerell, former executive vice president of operations at Walt Disney World, says customer service workers can make or break a company. “People go back to businesses where they are treated respectfully and where their problems are resolved effectively,” says Cockerell, author of The Customer Rules: The 39 Essential Rules for Delivering Sensational Service.

Dealing with an unhappy customer, though, can be challenging, since “difficult customers trigger our natural fight or flight instincts,” says Jeff Toister, author of Getting Service Right: Overcoming the Hidden Obstacles to Outstanding Customer Service. “We reflexively want to argue with the customer or get away from them.”

The best approach, though, is to “recognize a customer triggering this instinctive response, take just a second to pause, and make a conscious decision to help the other person,” Toister says.

Difficult customers come in several varieties, and they require slightly different approaches. Here are a few different types of angry customers and how to deal with them as a customer service representative.

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