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?

@Badbadbunny none of them are anything that couldn't be done somewhere else, they aren't tied to us in any way shape or form
The work can be done by anyone

Are they regular/repeat/past customers?

As I said, fair enough for random customers, but an organisation really needs to make a bit of an effort for repeat/regular customers.

It's not that we don't make an effort (this is like explaining to a customer who says it's disgusting all over again)
We only have so many hours in the day
If the plumber can do 10 jobs, we can't fit jobs 11 and over in
This is stuff that could have been booked well in advance, not an emergency, the equivalent of knowing you need a gas boiler check and not booking until a week before then complaining it's busy

Regular or repeat customers don't get priority but generally know to book well in advance and never have issues

badbunny I'm sorry to read about your husband's experience, as you said the NHS can be appallingly bad at talking to different departments and this leads to disjointed care.

Training has reduced dramatically.

A call centre where I used to work, there was 5 weeks of training. Now its 2.

When I started work, we had to watch a DVD of various things then get a manager to see if you are doing this correctly. Now its a 2 min clip on the intranet and get no-one to check if its alright.

Had a customer say to me "is it ok to keep the turkey in your store and pick it up on Xmas Day?"

Erm no.

One of the things that grinds my gears is the assumption that i'm an idiot. The amount of forced switchboards you have to sit through just to TRY and speak to a human being and some of them are set up to just hang up on you with the repeated message that I can find the answer if I just checked online.

Trying to call Royal Mail about a missing parcel;
"For a query about a delivery press 1"
Presses 1
"Did you know you can track the status of your parcel online? Just go to Royal Mail.com and enter your tracking. Goodbye"

Do you not think maybe I HAVE checked online and it didn't answer my question? I'm not choosing to spend 45+ minutes on the phone just for fun.

You end up pressing a random number and going entirely to the wrong person and by the time you've got through the automated maze and been transferred about four times tempers are a bit short at that point. There should be a "To speak to a human press 4" option for everything. It's not the person who answered the phones fault and I always try and remember that but it is incredibly frustrating after being passed from pillar to post for a simple question.

And on the topic of Royal Mail...who on earth decided their delivery office collection hours? Ours is open 8am-10am Monday to Friday. At that point why are you even bothering? That's another issue for another day

This is a really weird post. You admit your service is poor. Of course customers are going to be hacked off about that. Why wouldn't they have a disrespectful tone about an organisation as a whole that is providing a poor service?

This is a different situation to when a customer is rude to an agent who is trying to fix a problem that was unforeseen. The customer is still entitled to be aggrieved but polite people understand that these things happen sometimes and it's just bad luck. In your case poor service is the status quo. You need to look to your company, not the people receiving poor service.

I think it's a combination of people generally becoming more entitled, thinking that they are the only one that matters,and service from shops/businesses still using covid as an excuse for poor service.

‘Do you not think maybe I HAVE checked and it didn't answer my question? I'm not choosing to spend 45+ minutes on the phone just for fun.’

People always say this but I speak to a an awful lot of people who’ve probably heard this message as well but their query can very clearly be found online.

@LostGhost agree with you with the sorting office hours. Pre Covid -SO was open 7am-1pm and twice a week till 6pm.

Now it’s 8-10am!

Fortunately there’s a post office about half a mile’s drive from work with car parking (SO has zero parking). So if a parcel is due to arrive on my days in at work, I arrange on app to collect from PO

SAP is the work of the devil.

Slightly YABU but only because I believe its a society thing in general so probably exists on both sides of the argument.

I'm slightly peeved today though as I got accused of being a liar in a cafe today when I said I didn't order a ham & cheese salad for my the vegetarian in our party today.

I’m guessing the public are ruder. I’m always friendly and polite to staff.

I do get frustrated when on rare occasions staff are combative.

Had a situation today where I returned an item that I had paid for on Apple Pay on my phone. The staff asked to verify the card number to refund to. Unfortunately, my card was reported stolen so I couldn’t show them the card number on Apple Pay so they could refund to the same card.

The staff were so ‘computer says no’. I had to get increasingly more assertive and demand a refund today, as today was the last day (the 30th day) that the shop would issue a refund. It just made it all so stressful unnecessarily.