Abusive customers
Discussion
Hi guys,
Could anyone advise me on the following.
In terms of facing abusive customers on the phone, and your company having a policy in place regarding this.
Would the policy be owned by managers, or HR.
My thoughts are that as this type of behaviour affects the wellbeing and put bluntly, the mental health of employees, it should be owned by HR.
Thanks in advance,
mph999
Could anyone advise me on the following.
In terms of facing abusive customers on the phone, and your company having a policy in place regarding this.
Would the policy be owned by managers, or HR.
My thoughts are that as this type of behaviour affects the wellbeing and put bluntly, the mental health of employees, it should be owned by HR.
Thanks in advance,
mph999
Pica-Pica said:
In my view it should be owned at corporate (board) level. Even if there is a dedicated HR director, any policy will be decided and owned by the board as a whole. If the company is small and does not have an HR director, it will again, still be owned by the board.
Big company, we have HR director.mph999 said:
Pica-Pica said:
In my view it should be owned at corporate (board) level. Even if there is a dedicated HR director, any policy will be decided and owned by the board as a whole. If the company is small and does not have an HR director, it will again, still be owned by the board.
Big company, we have HR director.Pothole said:
Tell us the whole story please.
Quite simply, we occassionally face abusive customers which ranges from being shouted at, being sworn at, told you cannot leave the call for a break (lunch etc). There is no official policy for dealing with this, and when we raise it with managers often we are told, they were upset, they pay us money etc ..I'm not talking about the odd raised voice here, I'm talking about the call that involves being sworn at multiple times, being shouted at continuously. On an individual level, it's fairly rare, maybe once or twice per year, on a company level it's more common given the number of engineers we have.
There should be an escalation process in place. When I managed an organization I made it clear no first level employee should be dealing with abusive customers. (That May not be reasonable for your company though). When emotions started to run hot I had the first level employee bring in their manager. Some may think this under mines the employees authority but if handled properly, it works well. This is because the first level employee, in my case, needed to maintain a relationship with the customer that was around stability. By doing this, the customer would be civil in future and pick up the phone and call the manager.
Eventually, and very quickly if required, the issue would land at my desk. Typically, this meant I was going to tell the customer to f
k off. The customer isn’t always right! There’s a line of abuse that we can take but you will lose credibility in front of your employees if you don’t draw that line. It’s also very bad for business trying to make customers who want to be unhappy, happy. All that happens is that you lose sight of the good ones.
Eventually, and very quickly if required, the issue would land at my desk. Typically, this meant I was going to tell the customer to f
k off. The customer isn’t always right! There’s a line of abuse that we can take but you will lose credibility in front of your employees if you don’t draw that line. It’s also very bad for business trying to make customers who want to be unhappy, happy. All that happens is that you lose sight of the good ones. mph999 said:
I'm not talking about the odd raised voice here, I'm talking about the call that involves being sworn at multiple times, being shouted at continuously. On an individual level, it's fairly rare, maybe once or twice per year, on a company level it's more common given the number of engineers we have.
What type of industry/role is it? Obviously it's not acceptable in any circumstances, but in some roles it can go with the territory.h0b0 said:
There should be an escalation process in place. When I managed an organization I made it clear no first level employee should be dealing with abusive customers. (That May not be reasonable for your company though). When emotions started to run hot I had the first level employee bring in their manager. Some may think this under mines the employees authority but if handled properly, it works well. This is because the first level employee, in my case, needed to maintain a relationship with the customer that was around stability. By doing this, the customer would be civil in future and pick up the phone and call the manager.
Eventually, and very quickly if required, the issue would land at my desk. Typically, this meant I was going to tell the customer to fk off. The customer isn’t always right! There’s a line of abuse that we can take but you will lose credibility in front of your employees if you don’t draw that line. It’s also very bad for business trying to make customers who want to be unhappy, happy. All that happens is that you lose sight of the good ones.
Thank you, an interesting view.Eventually, and very quickly if required, the issue would land at my desk. Typically, this meant I was going to tell the customer to f
k off. The customer isn’t always right! There’s a line of abuse that we can take but you will lose credibility in front of your employees if you don’t draw that line. It’s also very bad for business trying to make customers who want to be unhappy, happy. All that happens is that you lose sight of the good ones. I certainly don't believe the customers is always right, my view is you should put the employees first, look after them, they will then want to look after customers.
What made this latest incident more annoying is that we had proved 100% it wasn't our software - I believe the shouting ensured because the customer didn't then know what to do, seems they wanted to pin the blame on us, and when they couldn't, took offence.
mph999 said:
Quite simply, we occassionally face abusive customers which ranges from being shouted at, being sworn at, told you cannot leave the call for a break (lunch etc). There is no official policy for dealing with this, and when we raise it with managers often we are told, they were upset, they pay us money etc ..
I'm not talking about the odd raised voice here, I'm talking about the call that involves being sworn at multiple times, being shouted at continuously. On an individual level, it's fairly rare, maybe once or twice per year, on a company level it's more common given the number of engineers we have.
Integral or ISS?I'm not talking about the odd raised voice here, I'm talking about the call that involves being sworn at multiple times, being shouted at continuously. On an individual level, it's fairly rare, maybe once or twice per year, on a company level it's more common given the number of engineers we have.
JulianHJ said:
What type of industry/role is it? Obviously it's not acceptable in any circumstances, but in some roles it can go with the territory.
IT support - yes we understand things can sometimes be a little heated and 'allow' for that, but this was a full on hissy fit, to the point that one colleague stated if he was spoken to like that again he would leave the call.Following this up, we found there was no official policy in place.
In terms of who owns this, while it would be nice if there was a company policy I don't see any reason why it can't be an IT support policy rather than company-wide.
I run a support department and our internal policy is very clear - in the event of a customer becoming abusive they are told that if they don't pack it in then we will end the call and they are free to escalate the issue to the departmental manager. We are lucky in that I don't think we've ever had to go that far - sometimes customers can be very angry but in terms of becoming abusive it's very, very rare.
It's our policy which we defined, but we made it known at director level what the policy was in case there where issues with sales, etc.
It also depends on the company culture, what the business sector is and exactly what relationship you have with your customers. I used to do IT support for products sold to the building and distribution trade - a bit of effing and blinding was par for the course with some customers but as long as it was directed at the issue and not the individual it wasn't a problem.
I run a support department and our internal policy is very clear - in the event of a customer becoming abusive they are told that if they don't pack it in then we will end the call and they are free to escalate the issue to the departmental manager. We are lucky in that I don't think we've ever had to go that far - sometimes customers can be very angry but in terms of becoming abusive it's very, very rare.
It's our policy which we defined, but we made it known at director level what the policy was in case there where issues with sales, etc.
It also depends on the company culture, what the business sector is and exactly what relationship you have with your customers. I used to do IT support for products sold to the building and distribution trade - a bit of effing and blinding was par for the course with some customers but as long as it was directed at the issue and not the individual it wasn't a problem.
Company policy and documented in employee handbook, with various internal processes built around this per department.
It's not an HR thing. If you can not localise to company policy, then localise to your department, build the process.
I can not imagine any leadership/management committee permitting abuse towards staff, otherwise it is not a company to work for.
It's not an HR thing. If you can not localise to company policy, then localise to your department, build the process.
I can not imagine any leadership/management committee permitting abuse towards staff, otherwise it is not a company to work for.
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