To think that customers / members of the public have become increasingly rude post Covid?

Solidarity @JenniferBooth, I hope you can get this sorted and nail their lying arses.

Yup! I've noticed it with patients too (normally during bank shifts tbf). My husband is a teacher and he's noticed a huge.

Yes, because the service itself hasn't changed in 4 years? Except it has changed enormously. Not the fault of staff but two days on a chair in A and E might annoy (or 3 months wait for a breast lump to be removed. Both examples from this week.

Absolutely agree with this - we are lucky in a sense that we have direct phone lines to staff publicised so it’s never a queue situation

As in, people can get straight through, or they have a direct line but it is always engaged/ansafone?

Oh i already posted that And you ignored what you didnt want to see . Never mind Perhaps you will be head hunted by the Post Office. They love people who dont see computer glitches and blame it on people

And for your fucking information we have not had a new kitchen or bathroom @PeonySeasons We still have the 1980s ones So you have the wrong poster or something more sinister

And i bet you were all about the "all in this together" when it was Covid.

Boy are you gonna look stupid when all this comes out.

I had a visit from my housing association income officer on Monday . Insisting we owe rent when we dont.

Get a load of this.

"OneSanctuary SAP is the name of a multi-million pound software system brought in by Sanctuary in 2016, designed for use by all areas of the business. It has been an unmitigated failure, and is a huge drawback of working for this company.
The issues caused by SAP are staggering and difficult to keep track of. Because SHA tried to implement SAP in a cost effective manner, they ended up vastly under-investing in critical elements. There is no tailoring of the generically presented system ('vanilla SAP'), which is an issue as social housing is a unique environment from a service delivery and CRM perspective, whereas vanilla SAP is more geared towards providing a solution for manufacturing industries. Thus, the system uses corporate nonsensical buzzwords and methods of handling accounts which absolutely do not reflect industry practice.
Here are just some examples of the more specific issues faced by staff:
No rent statements have been issued since it was implemented in August 2016, and if a resident insists on a rent statement it has to be prepared manually in a spreadsheet
The rent and calculations for accounts are hard to use, and often completely wrong. Mostly because the system was never designed to understand housing benefit payments, and this has a very convoluted workaround which a computer cannot make sense of.
SAP cannot interface with Local Authorities Housing benefit systems so payments are missed, lost or misattributed
Direct debits do not work reliably, and for a long time following the implementation did not work at all. Front line staff are now preferring standing order.
The front end system of SAP requires far more testing and money spent on it. Each customer account is a total mess of information, with no discernible way to separate notes left between differing departments, with information left by staff often going into the wrong account entirely. This needs looking at as from a compliance (DPA) point of view the breaches are serious
From a usability point of view, the view of a customers account within SAP CIC does not display appropriate information to the user (as stated before this is likely because the system was never designed to be used by a HA) and the user often has to go trawling around back end systems to find obviously relevant data (e.g tenancy start date, account balance, property type etc). This is a seemingly minor but considerable waste of resources"

And just like Horizon and the PO they will not admit that anything is wrong.

He stood at my door on Monday and pretended to look bewildered when i told him i knew all about their SAP. He also gaslighted me when i reminded him that this harassment has been going on for seven years and we have had previous letters demanding rent we dont owe and he had the gall to tell me that they were just general rent increase letters I can read. i know what they are and have kept them all. The first ones are tucked inside my 2017 diary with all the notes about their lies and obfuscation when all this started which is still going on.

It really goes both ways. Reduced service levels are becoming the norm and making life far more challenging for the average person than it was. It's not rude to complain about it.

When you must rely on certain companies or organisations, but can't actually trust them to help you adequately when needed, it's unacceptable.

I don't go into many shops and don't work in customer service so don't know, but I am certainly feeling very fed up of having to pay more and more for everything, only to be met with worse and worse quality of service from just about every company going, while they post huge profits. It is also extremely frustrating when you try to get through to a company on the phone only to be met with interminable messages about shortages, long wait times, tons of menus to sit and listen through, and then the ridiculously repetitive security checks to jump through once you've managed to actually speak to someone (who may or may not be able to actually resolve your query). None of that excuses rudeness, but I'm equally sure there aren't that many truly valid excuses for the poor levels of customer service so many companies seem to provide as standard.

And stop saying "Y'ok?". Just. Stop. And asking me what I have planned for the weekend. Yes, I know it's hard to make conversation. but just say "hot today, isn't it" or "I'm fed up of this grey weather", and if the customer is at all inclined to chat, they'll take it from there. If they don't, it's that they don't want to chat, and trying to chat is not going to "build a relationship*.

However, Octopus were excellent Yes. Octopus customer service is great. That's why I have no plans to switch. Twice when I've emailed them, the same-day answer has been "you can do it from the website by hitting this button, but I've already done it for you".

DH & I ran a business together that I had to leave post-covid. The behaviour of certain customers since mid 2020 has become truly awful. My final straw was a guy being rude (within earshot) about our prices whilst he was on holiday & we were worrying we weren't going to be able to pay the bills & working 70hr weeks. I actually snapped at him & then burst into tears - that was when I decided I couldn't do it any more.

I now run my own similar vein business that doesn't have incidental trade & so my customers there come because they've read/heard good things & have to make an effort. THESE customers are delightful & I adore them. I would now never go back into the industry under any other circumstances than the one I'm in, hospitality is a miserable miserable place to work now.

Surely that is customer service? It may not be your fault personally that you can't offer an earlier appointment, but your organisation is showing poor customer service in not having any appointments available for two months.

I wouldn't engage - she just likes to moan about everything the HA do, especially if they are fixing a problem or improving on the kitchen / bathroom etc. Pops up on every thread to do with landlords and writes the same complaints with occasional new reasons to hate them.

To be fair, the fridge and the freezer will add more heat to your flat running than they will off.

Staff are leaving due to rude, vile customers. Store management contact head office about recruitment. "Oh no you are 150 hours over contract per month".

From what I read somewhere, the staff hours are based on store size and average transaction. Don't look at the demographics of the area or typical customer. Our average transaction is low because of the elderly customers - widowed and have smaller appetites.

So customers are the initial spark to the cause of staff shortages whereas the retailers are fuelling the spark.

As I recall, the enforced outside queuing didn't pass without incident either!

So because customers had to suffer crap customer service during a "once in a lifetime event" like a pandemic, you think they should suffer crap customer service forever more! Sounds like you're part of the problem!

Plus are so impatient. They forgot just over 4 years ago, they had to queue outside to enter the shops and that was about 40 mins, based on my store.

Now they join a queue, tut, sigh and roll their eyes immediately.

I get the impression there's probably more burnout in customer service staff than there used to be too. Not new, I know. I used to work in a call centre myself, so I get it. But anecdotally, it seems to be worse now.

I think standards of service have deteriorated dramatically. My mother died this year and I have had lots of new customer interactions: banks, utility companies, council, etc. Some have been atrocious: people on the dedicated bereavement line who actually have no idea what they are talking about. Asking me if I had a grant of probate - no, she died last week, how could I possible have the grant! Calling me by my mother’s name, telling me they could not give me account info without a grant, despite that fact that I need the account info to complete the grant…
I don’t expect everyone in a customer facing role to know what to do when an account holder has died, but the dedicated bereavement team members should have a complete understanding of the procedures.
worst offenders: RAC, royal bank of Scotland and Nationwide, HMCTS - awful as phones only answered in the morning.
However, Octopus were excellent as was the council with council tax and DWP pretty good too.
I have always been polite, but it’s been an exasperating process.

Nail on the head. And that attitude goes right down to the front line staff, many of whom don't give a toss, because they know that there'll be no repercussions to themselves if they don't do what they say, or aren't polite etc. The staff can just cite "staff shortages" or "we're busy" to get away with utterly crap service.

A lot of the complaints I get are over "your customer service is awful" when what it really means is I can't offer what they want

For instance (without being outing) saying the first appointment is August and no, there isn't anything I can do to get them in earlier
Without fail the next comment will be how awful my customer service is
All I have said is that's the first appointment. They don't have to come to us, it's not like it's a dentist or a doctor, they could go anywhere else

I think customer service has become so much worse since covid.

It doesn't excuse people being unnecessarily rude, but I don't think it's unfair of people to complain if the reasonable expectation of the service provided is not being met.

Customer service standards have been nose diving for years. Long before Covid, but yes, that's made it worse.

I've no doubt that some customers are rude/entitled, etc., but the majority really aren't. Yet, far too many customer facing staff are rude, unhelpful and generally unpleasant to ALL customers, whether they've been rude or polite.

The lack of customer service is what is causing more and more, usually mild mannered, customers, to be more assertive etc.

Ask a perfectly sensible/reasonable question in a shop or on public transport, and (assuming they don't completely ignore you), you'll get a grunt or a nod or a shake of head, with virtually nothing verbal, and no help whatsoever.

My OH is the most mild mannered man you could find, never raises his voice, never aggressive, yet our local hospital has driven him mad due to their incompetence, shoddiness, general "can't be arsed" attitude, etc., and he's having ongoing cancer treatment. I've accompanied him to appointments and during treatments, and the staff really couldn't give a toss - and no, they're not "too busy" at all, they've just got some kind of "attitude" that means they do the bare minimum and just spend most of the time whingeing to each other!

Same at our local post office. The young lad who staffs the counter barely ever speaks, no pleasantries, no "good morning", no "thank you", just grunts the price and has a general attitude that customers are interfering with his mobile phone watching. It's not surprise that some customers get annoyed with him when they ask for advise or ask questions and he just grunts back, usually telling them to check online! That's really helpful!

Monday morning and Friday are our busiest (but I don't work in insurance)
I would say if they have long opening hours your best bet is when football/corrie is on TV!

@CantDealwithChristmas No, I was making an enquiry.