Is there any actual benefit of being rude, abusive towards any staff?

[Mokel]

Retail, other customer facing jobs (including call centre), medical etc

There is no benefit to being rude to these staff imo.

All it achieves is negative stuff
. Takes longer to resolve problems as waste time calming customer down
. You may not get the best customer service
. Others have to wait longer to be served
. You may be asked to leave or in call centre, get call terminated
. In extreme situations, you may be banned or struck off the list etc
. Staff leave. This is the case with retail. Staff are fed up with rude behaviour from customers. Then because retailers are cutting back on hours they won’t get replaced. The general public need to understand that if they behaved in a neutral manner, there would not be as many staff leave and they would not have to queue up as long to be served etc.

This is true, some companies are truly awful.

When my mum died and I had to ring round companies to let them know, close accounts etc the service of some was truly awful! The stupid idiot at the post office broadband said he would need to speak to the account holder, my dead mum, to ask permission before speaking to me!! I asked him if he had mis heard me when I said she'd died and unless he was going to hold a seance, I'm not entirely sure how he thought it possible. He still continued with 'must speak to the account holder' and not a single word of condolences! I'll admit he got a very stern 'now listen here....' speech which made it very clear my mother was dead and he was being completely stupid.

I've also worked in pubs and for a made to order product company and some people are just pure arseholes, but I never backed down unless I or the company was at fault.

I've generally found that if you need some help from customer services, if you're all nice and smiles and admit that maybe you made a mistake, people are more willing to help. I've had bookings changed without paying more by being so apologetic and nice. Never taken the piss though.

Why would anyone want to be rude and abrasive? How awful. Assertive is fine but nasty is not.

I work in property lettings and yes I know that we and estate agents in general have never been the most popular but we're just doing a job! However, some of the abuse we receive is off the scale. Yes, with the current housing crisis people are understandably frustrated when they were unsuccessful in securing a property or their rent has gone up but screaming abuse at us is not going to make us want to help them so they will be at the bottom of the list for the next property that comes along!

We've always had angry people when it comes to property maintenance despite dealing with issues as quickly as we possibly can but some people fail to understand that we can't fix every issue instantly by waving a magic wand. We have to wait for the contractor to come out, diagnose the problem and then they may need to order parts, just the same as if it was your own property! If an urgent issue can't be fixed straightaway we will always offer an interim solution such as plug in heaters but still they will moan. We can't win! However, there has been an improvement in this area since we got a new property manager. She has an absolutely lovely kind but firm manner and literally kills people with kindness. She's pissed on many a fire with even the nastiest, most unreasonable tenants struggling to be rude to her!

Will be hated for this but customer service is generally appalling. I am not talking face to face but insurance companies etc. It is no wonder that people get so infuriated and made to feel helpless when they are the customer and you have a job because of them; without them your job would not exist

This is true. It’s never an excuse for being rude or abusive but customer service today is breathtakingly awful.

I’m not so much talking about retail, more the purgatory of utility call centres. It’s an utterly soul crushing experience and it has driven me to actual tears before. I have just stayed the right side of the line and not been rude to anyone because it’s obviously not the fault of the person answering the phone. But by God do they make me murderous.

Its the contrast between the rhetoric that “the customer is always right” and “we really want to hear from you/value your feedback” and the bone chillingly awful experience of actually trying to get through to someone to talk to them.

And the way large companies insult your intelligence when you phone up to talk to someone by playing an automated message saying: “have you thought about using our website?”

Fuck me, Doris, that never occurred to me (bangs head on table).

I get that it makes sense to automate things and reduce costs to be competitive etc but it’s the dishonesty of the way they couch it to the consumer as “it will make life easier” which really makes people angry.

If I have called a call centre it is because by definition I have not been able to resolve my issue on the website or the automated AI chatbot. So I need to speak to someone. So please don’t talk to me like an idiot by suggesting I go through the whole miserable experience again.

I am not sure companies realise quite how angry this makes people. Rant over.

Customer service in these roles is notoriously bad. What so many workers think of as 'rude customers' is usually someone who expects a decent level of service daring to say that it's fallen short. If they can't handle that, it's quite pathetic.

I deal with some complaint resolution in my job.

100% the people that are reasonable and polite in communication will get a better and usually faster end result than those that shout and stamp their feet and are rude to me or my staff. The latter get my back right up and make me unwilling to go an extra inch for them, never mind an extra mile.

Because it gets them what they want, unfortunately.

In an ideal world no but making a fuss does get people what they want sometimes.

What makes good customer service, though?

Because I've read threads on here when people bitch and moan because a retail assistant has had the audacity to say "good morning" when they walk into a shop, or has offered them help while they're browsing, or has even looked at them for too long while they're deciding what colour to choose.

Most retail assistants are working off a very limited framework - they have to do XYZ and cannot do ABC. That's it - they don't have the flexibility to change the outcome for you even if it sounds like a really easy solution.

So people get frustrated and they bitch and get rude, and then a manager comes along (with authority) and gives in and makes the assistant look like a fool and the customer thinks "great, all I need to do next time is shout" and so on and on it goes.

You're talking about this as if the relationship was customers > customer service personnel

Actually customers and customer service relate to each other within a system determined by the company - call handling targets, sales targets, training levels etc. companies set the tone

I think everybody should work in customer service at some point, it really stops you being an asshole later on life.

my mum was lovely but used to be so rude and sarky to call centre people. I used to work on one myself and thought customers like that were pricks. I’ve also worked as a waitress and chambermaid so absolutely know how to behave.

I’m sure that’s true but you are dealing with the people who have been assertive enough to get past the “computer says no” loop on the main switchboard.

I am totally with you in that an arsehole who is ranting down the phone will not achieve a positive outcome.

But in a world where the default answer to any customer enquiry is “have you checked out website?”, you do have to be a bit pushy just to get someone to actually engage.

Same in the NHS unfortunately.

@Thepeopleversuswork Not in my case. I work for a small company. There's no chatbot or FAQ loop. It's an email to the general enquiries address that is picked up by one of our 6 customer service agents and if it's a complaint it comes directly to one of two managers to deal with, depending what it's about.

We're in an industry that has industry wide routes of recompense depending on the situation, and then we have the option to exceed these minimum legal entitlements as a gesture of goodwill. I will not exceed them for shitty shouty customers.

Agree, but I do have a relative who is so abusive and intimidating towards people that he genuinely does get what he wants a lot of the time.

It's horrible and absolutely wrong but it does work out for some people and therefore they will keep doing it. And usually there is no way to tie these kinds of incidents together and say look, this person has a pattern of bullying, abusive behaviour. So while they may get banned from certain establishments or lose contracts or relationships, that doesn't really matter to them, they just move on to the next victim.

And then for some people they aren't actually thinking about their actions as such or enacting a conscious campaign of intimidation. They just have poor emotional regulation skills, or they're having a bad day or whatever and it all comes out at the poor person on the customer service bench.

Not retail but I book surgery in a hospital. Those who ring constantly, complain, are rude etc tend to get their ops sooner just so we can get rid of them. I hate that it works this way.

@CheeseWisely

I work for a small company. There's no chatbot or FAQ loop. It's an email to the general enquiries address that is picked up by one of our 6 customer service agents and if it's a complaint it comes directly to one of two managers to deal with, depending what it's about.

So it sounds like your company has a properly functioning customer service operation which works the way it should.

The issue people often have with customer service at large companies is the fact that it’s very difficult to have a proper dialogue without being redirected into a digital black hole which in theory is supposed to make your life easier but in practice takes you shout into the void.

I am not justifying rude or aggressive behaviour at all. It’s inexcusable. But I think companies sometimes fail to understand that the fact people have been disintermediated from the customer service process is partly what is making them so angry and aggressive.

The harder it is to have a rational conversation with an actual person, the more likely you are to shout when you do finally get through to one.

The ex clearly benefited from it. He frequently got his own way and it certainly made him feel good about himself.

Personally, I wouldn't have been quite so happy to tuck into the complimentary dessert after he'd kicked off about some innocent waiter (or particularly waitress), but I'd worked in restaurants before and it served him right.

Obviously he wasn't like it when we first got together.

I have a benefit of looking at it from the management position and no, loud and abusive customers absolutely won't get what they want and I always backed my staff up. I have a very thick skin and "kill them with kindness" attitude. And yeah, sometimes I had to "fire" a customer for being abusive.
We were a local business and eventually our customers learned that we would go above and beyond to fix your issue if you were nice, non emotive and reasonable. But untill that happened, people thought that they have to "beef up" their complaints preemptively because they are not uses to getting resolution elsewhere.

No, and on occasion when I have become frustrated, I always apologise if i am rude to staff. I would not want to be in a customer facing role.

Banks and BT however are a whole other thing. 🤐

Friends husband manages an Aviva team. Callers are passed on to him when their screaming has reached unpleasant levels. The calls are recorded so he plays them a bit of their behaviour. It tends to change the tone of the rest of the call. His main bug bear is people who buy their insurance through John Lewis. They buy the cheapest car insurance possible because they hope they will never need it. When they do need it they expect a free courtesy car, onward journey transport ,5* recovery of their vehicle. Trouble is they went for the economy package so now they have to pay a lot more to add those things on. The phrase " But I'm a John Lewis customer" has been deployed many times . Sadly you are a very mean JL customer and screaming won't get you what you want.

No there is no reason for customers or staff to be rude. There are plenty of rude customers and plenty of rude staff. I was rude to the woman who called me about a fictitious car accident that i seemingly had. I explained that there had been no such accident but she insisted there had been, i asked her for the date but of course she came back with "i am not allowed to give out such information due to data protection" I told her she was wasting my time and to remove my number from her list, at that i put the phone down and went back to baking, seconds later the phone went again and lo and behold it was the same woman on the phone demanding to know why i had put the phone down her ! Yes i was rude in my answer and frankly i think i was justified in telling her to do one.

My Grandma always said you get more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.

Of course there is zero benefit to it, it makes people less likely to help you and making everything more difficult all around plus you risk refusal to serve you.

However I will say that there are some people who lack resilience and who are so used to people letting them down that they struggle massively with ANY perceived judgement or rejection. That can make them more likely to struggle in interactions and lash out. The problem is its hard to differentiate between these people and those who are just having a bad day or who just are entitled and have zero respect or empathy for others.

Grandad said the same. I try to remember it.