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.

I think your manager needs to make it clear to you when it is acceptable for you to end the call. If they told you that you just have to take it, you would have a point but it doesn't sound like that's what's happened.

If somebody was saying to me that I'm a failure and making personal comments about me - I'd tell them that the convo isn't productive and that they could call back another time.

I wouldn't expect my manager to do anything except reassure me that I acted appropriately. I certainly wouldn't expect them to have a talk to the customer about their behaviour. You need to assert your boundaries and figure out a way of ending calls if someone is abusive.

It is not ok to be berated at work or spoken to in an aggressive manner. What happens next depends on internal policies and practice.

You could get down in writing what happened from your point of view and ask your manager to review the recording. From my understanding of the conversation , there may be different elements that need handled separately. If there is a complaint from the client on the service - untangle that from the mode of delivery and agree with your colleagues/manager how to address that. Part of that will be you deciding what you are comfortable addressing yourself with the client and what you want handled by others.

For the way in which he spoke to you - that needs a conversation from someone senior on your side to set expectations for how staff are spoken to. He needs pulled up on it.

All that said, try to be "culturally literate" with what happened. As @Biffatcrafts said - swearing in general in Spanish just doesn't hold the same level of severity as in English and in my experience there aren't the same rules in terms of professional/unprofessional language. For example, coño is in no way similar to cunt or even fuck. So you may need to let some of the shock at his vocabulary go and focus on the way he spoke to you rather than the exact words he used.

Take care. It is awful being spoken to in an aggressive manner.

But I’m a native Spanish speaker (albeit not from Spain) and in our culture is this mean that. I mean that’s the dictionary meaning. So professionally he should also be aware about using “neutral professional Spanish”. We say for example “in chingo” which can actually be very neutral
in our way of speaking BUT would never ever remotely use it in a professional setting as ultimately the word does share a root with the equivalent of “fuck”.

I’ve also asked on the Reddit sub and even Spaniards agree it was out of place.

You don’t know your rights then

think you need to learn your rights

No, this goes beyond internal policies & procedures PP. OP can legally report to his HR department and no one can say a word to her about it .

Can you make my rights clear please? Which rights do you think I haven't understood?

I don't think it's of the same degree of seriousness.

I’ve said it a couple times already.,OP can report him to his own HR department as a protected disclosure / gendered abusive language, without fear of retaliation from her own company.

Sure but what would she hope to achieve by reporting to his HR in relation to her own manager's duty of care? What points did I make that made you say that I didn't understand my rights?

If her manager told her that she must just accept abuse then you'd have a point and she could certainly inform HR. I didn't read anywhere that this is what happened but maybe I missed that.

My point was that she needs to learn strategies to end calls when customers become abusive. Her manager needs to back her up when this happens. His employment is an entirely different matter and not quite what the OP was talking about.

ETA Sorry, misunderstood the quoted comment.

In my 14 years of similar roles in similar companies (but it’s the last seven that are all exactly the same type of role).

this has never even happened to me nor anyone I know.

We've been trained in a myriad of different thinks like objection handling, diffusing situations, and even turning negatives into positives.

This call was a completely different level from a “tense conversation” - which we’re used to, which is why I don’t think we’ve ever had trainings on “how to end abusive calls”.

but I’ll certainly bring it up to our coach/trainer although he’s more of the sales kind.

Thanks OP,

Fwiw, in my role I'm finding that people we provide services to and the professional network around them are becoming a lot angrier a lot quicker and are quick to blame us when things go wrong - even when it has nothing to do with us. It feels that morale generally is very low and that people feel entitled to be horrible to others. It has been steadily rising and the last 3 years have seen a huge shift.

I'm sorry you had a shitty call and I hope that your company provides you with the tools you need to weather them in the future - even if it is just permission to end shitty calls.

thank you. I’m still angry because you can tell in the call how he was breaking me and he still didn’t really stop.

What’s even worse, is that because of our line of work I had to even be “grateful “ for giving us this candid feedback.

I know a few days have passed, but I felt my dignity ended up on the floor and he just kept stepping on it.

I’m a district nurse - in peoples homes - we’ve all been sworn at and verbally abused. It’s not nice but it happens

What do you think your employer can do about someone swearing at you over a video call - apart from warn the client?

Well they could

a) fire the client (but that would be a loss of £100k so I doubt they will)

b) move me from that account but I actually like working with his y team (not him)

c) raise a complaint with his HR team, but I think that would mean we end up losing the account too

My preference is option C

You seem to be omitting (D). Follow up with the individual and outline expected behaviour standards.

I doubt that would change anything….. he obviously knows that was not acceptable

I am surprised by the amount of replies in here saying you should basically suck it up.

It's absolutely not acceptable for a professional to talk to another professional like that.

Yes, he's the client. He can be pissed off, and express that he's unhappy. Sure, plenty of people have to deal with that in client facing roles.

But personal, aggressive attacks? Absolutely not. That's simply nasty, aggressive bullying behaviour, designed to intimidate and humiliate.

I would expect someone from the director level team to step up to the plate and in no uncertain terms tell him it's unacceptable, ask for an apology, and terminate the contract if it didn't happen. I would also expect someone else to be put onto that contract, and calls to be supervised by someone at director level for foreseeable.

Yes, you might lose 100k contract. But in the long run you'd benefit from a stronger work culture where results are likely to be better for other clients, and ultimately could win more business.

Anything else is simply not good enough. Men like that need to be accountable for poor behaviour.

Not necessarily.

At the moment you and your employer have given him the impression that it’s fine.

Why you didn’t end the call is beyond me, but a very standard next step is to follow up and explain that in future won’t be tolerated. Same way as if an employee has an outburst.

Try to get him fired and possibly even criminal prosecution as hate speech.
OP doesn’t need to learn strategies to cope with abuse. She needs to hit back where it hurts.

How is that lesson learned ?! He needs to learn a lesson. Get him fired , get him prosecuted.

That very much depends on how aggressive it was. I have been left extremely upset by calls where not a single profanity was used, but the sheer venom and aggression from the other person was very distressing. As I said in a previous post, swear words as such don't upset me (grew up with motorbikes and horses, swearing is part of life there!) but the tone and delivery of things, and the clear intent behind them, can affect me.

And that's really what this thread is about. Not specific words used, but how it was pitched and how the other person was clearly trying to attack the OP and her employer. You can do this without swearing, you can also do it without getting aggressive, but a lot of people seem to think the best way to get their point across when they are unhappy is to go on the attack whether it's the person they are talking to who is to blame or if they are just the "face" of the organisation.

Most people who have been in a customer facing role have been verbally abused not because what they have done/are doing, but because the person shouting at them isn't happy about their employer. They don't care that they are shouting, screaming and threatening a normal person who's trying to earn a living, all they see is a uniform or a logo.

The poor lad on the end of the phone isn't the one to blame for the dustbin men missing a bin at that day's collection, the girl on the phone isn't to blame for the cost of your fuel bills being high, the elderly person hanging on until they can afford to retire isn't the one at fault for the water leak that wasn't fixed right away. And from the sound of her OP, @Sillyquestion123 wasn't the person to blame for the problems her customer had with the company she works for as she wasn't even on that account yet. Nobody likes having to take the blame & backlash from other's failings; to have to take that from a supposedly high level professional who damn well should know better makes it feel even more personal.

Oh, well I guess that's certainly an approach to take but the OP's question was about her own manager's duty of care to her not consequences for the other guy. I'm still curious about what rights you think I misunderstood.

EXACTLY!

Humiliating someone is never right, but within a professional environment is even less expected.

and I’m still shaken by the ordeal, I even cried and felt the physical effects of distress that I sometimes feel (like the left side of my lips feel droopy, I don’t know if I’m explaining it very well).

Option C all the way. Losing the account doesn’t matter. Your biz will probably lose the account anyway by renewal given how bad the relationship is