This helps, eventually, but enter with the understanding that many - depending on the product and how problematic it is for them, most - calls will start with t

This helps, eventually, but enter with the understanding that many - depending on the product and how problematic it is for them, most - calls will start with the customer coming in feeling negative. They're blocked or confused, which can make them frustrated, angry, and anxious. If you can start from a point of listening closely from empathetic and sympathetic viewpoints, you can put even more weight behind it. To help make that "let me help you do good things with our product" moment work, you can first or also feel out how they feel while you gather the details you need to move forward. If there's justified anger - if it's clearly something that's broken from the jump, or even a known issue, and it probably shouldn't have shipped broken - you can empathize honestly because we've all interacted with something like this. Sometimes the biggest thing someone on the other end of the call needs is for someone to officially acknowledge that yeah, this sucks. If there's anger that's not yet justified - something that might be a bug, but might also be user error - make it clear that you're here to help the company fix the problem. If it's user oversight, it's not necessarily the user's problem; the docs could be improved (even if nobody reads them), the UI could be clearer (even if nobody notices the change). People want to know that their problem will result in action, for them, which makes them feel not only value but invested in the product. (This doesn't work as well when there's a new problem every week - in which case, they know they're a tester, and someone should reach out with a discount or be ready to churn them.) If there's outright panic - if the product is blocking them so critically that their job or a large project is in danger - get the wheels turning on escalation ASAP and make it clear that you're reaching out for help. Nobody wants to be on the phone/in chat/in an email thread with something big on the line and on your end, nobody's taking it as seriously. Even if the end result is user error, or an easy fix, even just hinting that other people are working on it will help. And even if you can only get another person on your side who can't do anything but keep the customer talking while you investigate the issue, it'll prevent long gaps on hold where you might be working your ass off but the customer thinks you're shuffling them off hoping they go away. (If every issue is a panic, they either have a MASSIVE organizational problem on their end that they genuinely need to address to stay a customer, or they're abusing escalations to have you do their job for them. Either way, track escalations closely and sync with others in your company on them as often as you can.) If you can gauge these things early in the interaction and get the customer closer to being alongside you fixing the problem, then when you tell them "I'm going to work with you until the root cause is identified and fixed for you and everybody else", they're not going to try to see through it as customer service speak.