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

[Sillyquestion123]

I work in a client facing role and yesterday one of clients verbally abused me. He even used swear words and it’s all recorded. I’m still shaken by the ordeal.

My manager reassured me it was not my fault, and she’d listen to the recording , but that was about it.

Im still in charge of that account until I hear otherwise.

ive never been in this situation before so I really know if should be expecting more or not.

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.

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

All normal human responses to attack

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.

I think beyond the abuse I was able to get my points across (as he actually admitted that I was right) and even said he was “glad” to see the frustrations were mutual (in the sense that we both understood the situation had reached an unacceptable level).

it’s very common that clients put the blame on us for slowing things down, when it’s usually them. And that’s pretty easy to audit.

His approach also slowed things down, just like his sub-team confirmed .

it was the tone and use of language that was unaccounted. But the obviously as my main job is retention, that was my #1 concern.

Lesson learned, I think from now on remind them the call had been recorded and I will end the call due to use of foul language and general aggressiveness.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In an ideal world I’d like it to be escalated to HIS HR department, but I don’t know if my company would.

I’ve dealt with plenty of angry and frustrated people/clients but this was the first time that it was “personal”, plus all the foul language.

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

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…..,

I’d have to look into the logistics of how would it work in Spain (where he’s based and so are his company’s HQs).

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?

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.

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.

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

Yes I actually did! I even told him that many of his accusations could be proven wrong (and easily!)

and so far my role is assisting my colleagues who run this party of the “customer journey” my role truly starts later. He even admitted that some people are better at different stages of the journey.

So as much as he was awful to deal with, he agreed to some of my points.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.