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

I saw an interesting comment recently that self checkout arrangements change the job of retail staff from customer care to crowd control - managing queues, preventing theft etc. It's much less about friendliness abs support.

This is very true in my experience. I try to be extra polite and patient as a customer/service user because I have to deal with so much rudeness in my own job. People have forgotten basic manners!

It does go both ways though. Eg. I was treated very rudely and dismissively by healthcare staff yesterday. I know they're probably burnt out and dealing with all kinds of shit, but everyone has difficulties. It feels like people generally just don't care and can't be bothered.

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

Example 2

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"

Our Horizon!!!

Just one example of their cuntishness

Well ive been proved right. On Sunday i said to DH Whats the betting they suddenly decide to change the fuse box now there is a heatwave. Lo and behold they turned up yesterday with no notice. Expecting me to have my fridge freezer and chest freezer turned off for HOURS in this sauna of a flat. No no NO! the electrical check was done back in JANUARY five months ago. An isolater was fitted at the beginning of last month also by a contractor who turned up with no notice and electric was turned off for that but this is a longer job.
They have had five months. FIVE MONTHS we have had a cool spring. This flat gets far too hot in the summer to be turning the bloody fridge and chest freezer off Im sitting here in a soaking wet T shirt because its so unbearable.

FACT. i found undergoing tests for bowel cancer recently much less stressful than dealing with my housing association.

It's a two-way street, I'm afraid. Nearly all organisations need to radically change the way they speak to people.

I used to be friendly and polite to everyone I spoke to. But all my goodwill has been eroded by call centre queues and protocols.

They need to stop the use of pointless chatbots, AI and the unbearable 3-minute recorded intros with 47 different call options.

And stop saying "Y'ok?". Just. Stop.

End of rant

I think it's a mixture of things. There's a lot more alienation.

The experience of covid plus lockdown has pissed a lot of people off, and they lash out more at institutions and people in any structure that seems to have power and influence. Things like mental health and ability to cope with stress are worse.

People are experiencing generally worse customer service across the board. So even if your organisation was like this before covid, the climate is that lots of others are shitter than they were a few years ago. People resent that, they want it back and in most cases they haven't given much thought to the fact that it's harder to fill those vacancies than it was 5 years ago. You were probably shielded from some of the worst behaviour in the past because your customer service teams were unusually poorly staffed. So you were the worst rather than one in a long line, if that makes sense.

The random person on the street is also probably more likely than they were a few years ago to be experiencing other issues that might make them more likely to snap. Stuff like being on an NHS waiting list, having to do more unpaid care, being short of money etc.

I agree @parkrun500club

We know that businesses are tightening their belts while increasing prices. BUt they are also delivering worse levels of customer service.

Automated chatbots only work for filtering queries to the right people. Its far too difficult to talk to a human these days - when you get an automated chatbot that doesn't understand your query or one that tells you to go away because they are busy (British Gas I'm looking at you), its no wonder complaints are soaring.

Also, add in the fact that many businesses won't invest in training for their staff these days, or give employees authority to use their initiative and instead stick to a pre-prepared script, i can see why irritation is high.

Obviously there's no excuse for rudeness

Yes this is also true. Which? set out a "manifesto" of consumer related issues they wanted a new government to resolve in their latest magazine, but oddly, this didn't make the list.

A new government should require companies will have to deal with consumer queries within 24 hours (and I mean a sensible substantive response, not just "we've got your response and will respond in 6 weeks' time or not at all". Obviously there might be the odd exception eg in the energy sector where meters are mixed up, but the trend for companies not to talk to each other to resolve things needs to stop.

Yes I think people are ruder.

But also companies need to recruit enough staff and train and pay them properly, instead of funnelling all their revenues to shareholders.

It cuts both ways.

The general cutting down of numbers of staff means there is more to complain about. But in addition, companies are making deliberately it harder to complain. It’s increasingly difficult to find a customer service phone number, or indeed, any sort of phone number.

I used to work in complaints for a large company, and nothing you’ve said sounds of of the ordinary. However i think some people are just still angry, and i’m aware that kids’ behaviour has got worse since covid, as people and kids were treated like shit during covid.

I think there's always been rude people in the general public but I've been experiencing more rudeness from the other side of this exchange and frankly get pretty fed up of it so I'm not really sure if they're being unreasonable or not.

Were you trying to make a claim?

@CantDealwithChristmas I waited an hour for an insurance company to answer the phone.
@spikeandbuffy I’ve tried at all time of the day, except Monday morning and Friday afternoon. The last time was Thursday afternoon.

Most large public sector organisations treat their stakeholders like shite, though. HAs, NHS, GPs, councils. They know they have a captive audience who cannot take their customer elsewhere because there is no 'elsewhere'. Therefore they are not motivated to treat their stakeholders with respect.

The logical end point of the public sector's contempt for the public is the 8 hour bread queue in the USSR. If your 'customers' have nowhere else to go, what is the point of giving them a good service?

And housing associations. Large ones like Sanctuary and Clarion so there is no excuse.

@Bluevelvetsofa it's not
Screens, phones, toilet time are all logged

Every Monday morning people ring and complain about the queue
There's a phone call back you can press that will prioritise you. We are open sat and sun and early evening
People would rather ring at 9am on a Monday and queue for 45 mins than ring on a Sunday when it's so quiet we get 30 mins between phone calls

I think in some industries, it's due to a lack of competition and the relative difficulties of switching providers.

Some of the worst companies for long phone wait times are broadband providers, hard utilities like water/gas, and phone companies. These industries are all essentially oligopolies with very few very large players. They know you're not likely to switch, and if you do switch, it'll be to one of a very small number of 'competitorsd'. Therefore they are simply not incentivised to treat their customers well.

Cntrast this with industries where there is a somewhat healthier market (in terms of competition) - eg insurers, private healthcare providers, gym groups. It will quickly become apparent that the wait times are much lower - they really want and need your custom, and therefore don't want to keep you waiting.

It’s pretty apparent that if you’re waiting in a phone queue and are told it’s a 30 minute wait, you’re going to be annoyed by that and wonder why more staff aren’t deployed to reduce the queues. Particularly when you then get the recorded message telling you that you can find an answer to your query online. Well, clearly you can’t, because you’ve already tried that, the chat bot is hopeless and the only way you’ll get something approaching an answer is to try to speak to an actual person.

I have no idea whether working from home has exacerbated the problem. I don’t know whether people log off their screens to do something and leave customers waiting. I don’t even know if that’s possible.

Physical stores seem to be reducing staff too. Sainsbury’s has three manned tills, but only one is open at a time. The space for smart shop or self scan is too small really, for packed trolleys, but that’s what you have to do to get your shopping. We wanted advice on some technology in John Lewis. There was literally no member of staff in the department, except for a rep from a TV brand.

I don’t think it’s surprising that people get fed up. You’re expected a lot of the time, to rely on technology and when it doesn’t work, what then? Car parks have apps, but they’re all different and who wants to be faffing around for the right one, then finding it doesn’t work, then you have to try to find a number to call.

I also think that people have become much more entitled and far less to,era t over the last few years. Car drivers, cyclists, dog owners, people on public transport, in shops, theatres, restaurants and so on. Everyone wants to please themselves and not others.

I do wonder sometimes if the lockdowns caused us to forget how to behave in public.

We have so many rude customers at work now - and they’re rude from the get go - I answered the
phone to someone this morning who was thoroughly obnoxious and angry that no one had replied to his email. It was 8:45am and we don’t actually open until 9am and he’d emailed at 8:30pm last night. The first time he’d ever contacted us.

Pre-Covid we rarely dealt with rudeness.

Customers also seem to expect stuff immediately and are horrible when they’re told it’s not possible, or we’re fully booked so they’ll have to wait, or if something they want is flat out impossible. I was ranted at the other day because I’d made someone’s child cry when we couldn’t fit them in for the timescale they wanted - what was I going to do about it/they wanted a discount, etc. No way and I’m not really sure what your child crying has to do with us tbh.

We make luxury items related to the leisure industry so nothing life or death.

My bosses are great. They won’t tolerate rudeness and call it out every time. We just won’t work with someone who behaves like that - if they’re arseholes to start with, it’s pretty much a given they’re going to be an utter pain in the arse during and after their job so they can fuck right off.

Absolutely. People can be vile and ever so inconsiderate in how they present themselves towards strangers. It says an awful lot about a persons character the way they treat customer services staff.

People are definately more entitled and way ruder than they were before covid. I work in an entertainment business (and worked in the same place for three years before covid) and you would think we forced people to be there the way some of them come in with faces like smacked arses determined to have a row.

Just in the last two weeks we've had - making comments about getting refunds 'because they'll have a good time then make some shit up', complaining that Google maps didn't work, blaming us for the traffic and parking, scowling at staff trying to be friendly.

We have more people demanding discounts than ever before and getting arsey on phones and in person if we do not reduce the price of their experience.

Our customer service manner has not changed, nor has the personal, bespoke experiences we provide. Yes, the prices have gone up the same as everywhere else in the current climate.

The general public want the moon on a stick, for free or cheap and woebetide us if it is the wrong shape!

Yes it’s about managing expectations. People who remember how it felt to use your service when it was fully staffed are bound to feel less satisfied.