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

[BusyTeal]

Without posting too much info to be outing - I work in a public facing role where I am required to issue reports & other documents to members of the public or companies etc. These documents can take some time to process and (as with many other companies / sectors) we are seeing greatly reduced staffing levels and thus higher volumes of work for existing staff.

Many of my colleagues have mentioned this while we’re together, but it is becoming increasingly more common for members of the public (predominantly) but also other professionals who use our service to send ratty emails and call constantly to moan about the poor service we are providing. Pre-Covid, this was a fairly rare occurrence (maybe once a month) but it’s more like nearly daily now despite being completely transparent about the difficulties our organisation / service is facing. Side note: we have experiences recruitment difficulties long before Covid, in 2018 I was only one of two team members on a team that should have been 8 strong!

Not only are we seeing higher numbers of “complaints” but also the tone of the correspondence is much more tense, often to the point of being blatantly rude, disrespectful and downright offensive to staff and the organisation as a whole.

Am I being unreasonable to see this as a “post Covid” after effect, or have others seen this trend too?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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

Thank You

@MereDintofPandiculation not really

It's the equivalent of ringing kwik fit and yelling at them because they don't have an MOT slot
You could pick from a thousand other places, it's not bad customer service to say we can't do it because we are full
I don't yell at my hairdresser because he books 4 months in advance

Completely agree.

People are rude entitled arseholes.

I think that part of the problem is that people want good customer service, with enough staff, but they don't want to pay the higher taxes/ higher prices that would be needed to actually hire more staff, or in many cases, to fund the investment in housing that is needed to retain staff in areas without affordable housing.

I agree OP. This thread has provided many examples of posters justifying rudeness.

I think everyone is just out for themselves, no-one is more in need of the service then they are and it's fine for others to wait, just not them.

Yes people can get straight through to us (well, I know they definitely do to me the amount my phone rings 😂). We’re currently going through an IT upgrade too - it wouldn’t surprise me at all if some of the phone numbers people have / are floating around online aren’t even “live” anymore (as in, the person who had that phone has left, and the phone is sat in a desk drawer…) But at least we are actively working on it and trying to make things better!

I’m so sorry to read this and can totally see why you are frustrated! Even from my perspective as a very tired employee, the members of the public who come to us with evidence, paper trails etc are usually the easiest to help as we have clear evidence in front of us and a timeline to work on - much easier than starting from scratch! Hope it all gets sorted for you soon x

Haha I’m going to use y’ok from now on for all customer calls 😂 On a serious note though, I totally get the two way street comment - it’s human nature to feel defensive if you start a call / email off on the back foot with someone immediately going for the jugular, and then our tone of voice shifts etc and it just escalates things. Let’s all just be nice 😭😂

That's part of it. Public facing roles are less attractive than they used to be, and people have more choices.

So can I ask @Busyteal, I've always wanted to know. Why do organisations persist with the crappy automated phone systems? Do they enjoy winding people up or something? I don't listen to any of it and just cannot be arsed with security questions and just go through to Option 47 or have to receive 45 emails and codes or whatever, thus prolonging the agony for both sides.

It was better 20 years ago without all this digitalised shite.

Front line staff need higher wages so they can be retained and are motivated to stay and develop in their role.

Chatbots, endless phone menus need to go unless it is the customer's choice to use them.

Customers need to remember that the person serving them is a human being with feelings.