What’s my employers’ duty of care? Should I expect more?

Try to separate the behavior from what he was frustrated and angry about.

This is the correct advice, but there has to be a line. OP hasn't really made it clear how the language was used. I'd forgive someone who was justifiably upset/frustrated shouting "The c..ting files are never done on time", but if that person were to call* me *a c..t, that would be the end of my dealing with them.

Be glad you don't work in the public facing parts of the public sector, where daily interactions risk verbal abuse, unfair blame, and generally depressing behaviour that makes you question why you bother. And that's just from colleagues 😂

in seriousness if you can't chalk this up, a different colleague needs to be assigned to this work. Worth knowing though that once someone has been an utter knobber with you sometimes next time around they are a bit embarrassed at themselves, and I will often start the next consultation with something like 'hopefully we're all feeling a bit calmer this time' and do my best teacher look.

And of course it's normalised. Pupils in many schools have been allowed to get away with using that kind of language directly to staff for years.

Yes, your manager needs to communicate to them that it was unacceptable language and perhaps you can also source some sort of course regarding dealing with difficult customers. There are strategies you can use to try to de-escalate. It’s not nice but we all learn from these experiences.

In that case I think you also need to acknowledge what you want your company to do is terminate his account and lose his business. Because there is no way you can put in a complaint to his HR team and that not be the outcome.

You are normalizing horrible, sexist language being used in a professional work environment. This is not ok and the OP has every right to feel upset and shaken by being called a cunt.

i take it he doesn’t know your exact role in his case so far, for him you’re just representing a company that he is displeased with. It is not personal - he is just frustrated with your org and in his mind you are their representative so you get it both barrels. Please don’t take it personally and just hang up next time and follow up with an email to say please re arrange meeting when you can conduct yourself in a professional manner.

This campaign is for healthcare workers but there are some valuable lessons in here. If you are the recipient of rude and unprofessional behaviour, your performance will drop for a short time after that, due to the effect on you. Not only that, but people who witness that behaviour also have a (smaller) drop in performance for a short time after that. Overall, having people behave in this sort of manner damages performance and relationships.

I hope that you are feeling better now, OP.

It's probably worth looking through your company policies about professional behaviours /seeing if there is anything in the contract with that person's company about professional behaviour. It's always helpful to be able to refer to a document.

Next time you are on a Zoom call with this person (or even every time you are on a Zoom call, so you can't be accused of singling them out), open with "Thanks for coming everyone. Just to remind everyone, these meetings are recorded. Unprofessional language or behaviour will result in the call being stopped" and have a little phrase ready such as "That language is inappropriate, if it continues I will stop the call" and then on a repeat/if it doesn't stop "This call is no longer professional/It is unprofessional and rude to speak to me like that. I am ending the call" and do it.

More organisations need to enforce a zero tolerance policy on abusive behaviour like this. It is disgraceful that people just seem to be able to get away with treating others like shit because ‘that’s just how it is’. It shouldn’t be! There is NO excuse for it.

I think he was just frustrated, he is paying a lot of money and the service so far sounds bad. He should not have sworn however at all, I would have directed him towards the complaints process if applicable, they tend to calm down when you agree if there have been issues in the service delivered.

Just to add it’s all part of dealing with the public.

I work on a supermarket checkout, most people are nice but there are some really awful ones too. I was sworn at by a supposedly respectable woman last week.

She didn’t realise it was verbally abusive until she told her colleague as well, which I find a bit strange.

This wouldn’t phase me at all due to previous years in customer-facing roles, but I would say the next step is to discuss a plan/process/policy with your employer on how to deal with the same behaviour moving forward.

As a PP said, a first common step is to calmly say ‘it’s unacceptable to swear at me and if you do so again, i will terminate the call’, so they at least have a warning.

Obv with most customer facing roles, you can’t actually get rid of them so you need to agree a way with your company of dealing with abusive clients.

But when he called you less than useless you explained that you hadn’t actually started working on his case yet? I work with the public and get so much verbal abuse, I immediately correct anything unfactual and I would not let someone call me a cunt and continue with the call, when they start to escalate I remind them the call is recorded and I am here to help then and understand their frustration but I will not tolerate any abuse.

You sound very precious! Seriously what are you expecting, Sounds as though you have never heard swear words before. Unpleasant yes but grow up perhaps?

I’m self employed (so no recourse to a boss or colleague on my side) and working at c-suite level doing something not dissimilar to you. And I’ve dealt with a couple of charged situations with mental ceos!

I would start by fixing the problem, or getting a plan in place to fixing the problem. This will calm the situation.

Then id share that with him in a positive, proactive email. Which I would end with “I felt that our last meeting was very tense, so I just wanted to let you know that as a result of that I’ve made the decision to record all future meetings. Recordings will be saved securely in a password protected section of our server, and deleted after six months”.

Even if he already knows that meetings are recorded that’s a clear warning that you’ll use the recording if he does it again…..,

It doesn’t matter if your company don’t want to. You still can and should. Why should he get away with it?

This happened to me, I refused to deal with them again & asked my boss to sack them as clients. They wouldn’t sack them but now they deal with that account.

I've never been on the receiving end of nastiness while being employed by consultants and dealing with C suite level colleagues but I did when employed in a call centre for corporate complaints.

I never got called a f c but I was called useless, and the level of vitriol aimed at me personally was mind boggling. What makes it worse that usually these people come across as being as nice as ninepence.

Unsurprisingly I didn't last long.

I'm surprised to be honest that you deal with the C-suite types and haven't encountered more dicks!

20 year healthcare career over here. Many dicks encountered over the years, and difficult to deny service unless the behaviour is pretty extreme.

I'd expect a manager to speak with a customer if they were particularly rude to advise them that however unhappy they are, the company doesn't accept abuse towards staff.

You will need to put this down to the client having serious communication problems. Their actions are a reflection of them and not you. When dealing with difficult people on the phone go silent and when dealing with difficult people in physical context, stare into their eyes deeply. It will unnerve them as all they want is to vent and see someone react. If you don't react, they don't get their fix.