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

Obviously he was wholly inappropriate.

I work with a similar level at clients in professional services and we have clauses in our engagement letters about appropriate behaviour to our teams.

If something like this happened, I as the director (highest person on our side) would be contacting him to say absolutely not acceptable and what is he going to do about it. I would have no qualms about terminating the engagement regardless of the £100k fee and would be supported by my leadership to do so.

You should consider what you want here and advocate for yourself with your management. E.g. if you don’t want to deal with him again, say that and ask it be moved to someone else. Do you want someone senior to speak to him about how inappropriate it was and get assurances of never again? Do you want an apology? Think about it then ask for it.

Nobody has EVER spoken to me like that in almost 25 years of office work. It's not normal.

I'm trying to think and the only time I had that kind of interactions may have been with drunk people in a customer service role with the general public, which does not seem to be what you have.

Have you ever heard fight, flight, freeze, fawn?

All normal human responses to attack

That man needs to be taught a lesson & I bet many people will thank you for it.

Tell your company you want him reporting to his HR department for discriminatory abuse. C word is misogynistic gendered word.
If your company don’t want to do that, you can do it anyway without fear of retaliation from your company. Send the recording.

I manage a contact centre. If this happens, the associate would be able to terminate the call or ask one of the managers to take over the call.
We would review the call and often senior management (me) would get in touch with the client. There have been clients we’ve had to “ban” from calling because of their behaviour.

Where I used to work we would sometimes have to deal with this kind of hostility. If you’ve never experienced it before I can understand it would come as a shock.
i went on a course called something like ‘Effective communication and dealing with difficult customers’. It was really useful. Maybe ask if your company can send you on a similar sort of course?

Look, this was not face to face and you could have ended the zoom call as soon as the client swore at you. Given that you chose not to, it is not clear what you expect your employer to do after the event. In your position I would refuse to work with that client again.

The expectations about how employers manage things like this have changed. HSE are now expecting stress risk assessment and evidence employers have considered things like employee assistance programs (Google EAP). I've linked below to HSE. Even if your industry is not normally targeted by HSE your LA would enforce in the same way.

I'd start by explaining to your employers how you feel and suggest what support might help you (eg at least being taken off this account) and take it from there. They might not realise you need more support, if they are dicks about it you can consider your legal options

https://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/

Btw I'm H&S not hr but my hr colleagues have said tribunals for things like this if not managed right will go through the roof

Sending hugs

Try to separate the behavior from what he was frustrated and angry about. I work in complaints and people regularly shout swear and are abusive, then the next day they often apologise. It's horrible the first time it happens to you - remember the things he said aren't true about you and don't let it get to you x

Unfortunately, you do get used to this sort of behaviour, and get better at dealing with it. I work in the public sector and its really common to be on the receiving end, it used to really upset me. But over the years ive become much better at dealing with it. Its like water off a ducks back now sadly.

That said, its not usual in your role. Id expect this client to be given to a colleague to deal with snd also for him to be made aware that this sort of behaviour is not tolerated.

Well, I think it's a sorry state of affairs for anyone to be abused at work, and to see so many people here normalise it. Perhaps that's the problem, we don't hold people to account anymore.

Agreed.

Sticks and stones OP, swear words are just words.

From what you describe, you should expect more. The foul language especially. I expect if it is a company that is your client, they may wish someone else to represent them.

This is the approach I would expect too. Your client needs to be told, clearly, that his treatment of you was unacceptable.

Even if it costs the company £100k in lost revenue.

That sort of behaviour has no place in business; actually let’s stop at ‘no place’.

That sounds utterly horrible, OP. I suggest you talk to your employer again about what further action they might take. That kind of behaviour is unacceptable. If this guy’s business is struggling, it may be because he’s a nasty piece of work. It’s perfectly possible to express frustration without abusing someone.

I’d expect your boss to speak to their boss about it tbh. And they should be pointing you to their employee assistance programme for support.

I had to deal with a similar complaint from one of my employees years ago. Client contact used awful language in emails, on calls etc. Horrendous attitude on him that went way beyond frustration and into abuse.

I called the guy's boss who admitted the chap could be hot headed, but said he would speak to him. The guy denied, minimised etc, so I got them both on a call and played them a recording of his greatest hits, and told them that we would not be dealing with that individual anymore.

He lost his job not long afterwards (I got the impression that this was the straw that broke the camel's back) and ended up in trouble with the police as he wouldn't stop turning up at the office shouting at staff!

I worked in a similar role and had one high ranked customer do the same to me.

It was over the phone, so I just said "I'm not prepared to continue this call while you use abusive language" and hung up.

Reported it to my director. He asked me if I was ok to continue taking calls from that individual, which I was, as long as he calmed down. And that was it.

Stay calm, use a rehearsed statement and hang up if you find it unacceptable.

But report any physical threats. We had one very nasty customer who parked outside a director's house for a month. Not nice.

I’m sorry but at your level you should of done more to control the meeting and pointed out it was unacceptable

there are ways of doing this without being confrontational

It can be very upsetting being shouted at and sworn at. I find I'm more upset afterwards than in the moment. It's as if my brain is trying to process what's happening. Does your company have a policy about abuse/ verbal aggression? To be honest I would have said that I didn't expect to be spoken to in such a manner and if it continued I would end the call. Then if it had I would have ended the call.