The irate customer can be like a time bomb, and its important for anyone in a customer service role to know how to properly "defuse" that customer before things blow up.  To help as an example, Ed leads Alan through a story of "Alan and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" to illustrate how a series of exhausting service experiences can lead to a very tense customer and what the person handling that customer needs to do to put the encounter back on the right track. Ed Gagnon is President of Customer Service Solutions (www.cssamerica.com), helping organization improve the service they provide to their customers through training, consulting, mystery shopping and process improvement.  Alan Jackson is President & CEO of The Jackson Group (www.thejacksongroup.com), specializing in employee and customer satisfaction surveys and consulting.