Customers crossing boundaries

[Motylog]

I work in the housing sector. I have 2 customers who are pestering me on a daily basis as they want to move. For one of them the application has been sent to the manager for approval and I explained last week it would not be looked at till this week but this person has anxiety and keeps emailing everyday. I already explained the manager had a report to do and was off on one day but the customer chose to ignore this.

The other one we are waiting for the other landlord to agree the swap and the other landlord was really annoyed and said our tenant kept harassing them and it is the hands of their manager. I am being asked for updates and it was only been 1 working day.

I am really angry because our organisation’s service standard is reply to the customer within 24 hours. We had a staff away day so I couldn’t respond as one email was received late the day before we were off. I think these customers are taking advantage because they have my email address.

They both don’t work and are clearly anxious as they are fixating on this as they don’t keep busy. I have no control over when my manager responds or another organisation.

We had a consultant come in recently as the organisation has an issues to keep pandering and responding to customers quickly and doing things that are not part of our services. The tenants have got used to putting pressure on people.

If I reply I am wasting my time and energy repeating myself and getting further behind with my work. If I don’t reply they could put in a complaint that I am not responding. I have had enough and it is stressing me out. I have the right to not be harassed and pressured at work. I feel like ringing in sick.

Well, they are definitely not the most stressful requests you will come across in housing. Pity the poor housing staff who get constant calls from tenants to decant them because the hot water is not working, or their neighbour is harassing them or someone has poisoned their dog. All while you are actually trying to deal with an unexplained death in one of your flats, a fire in a sheltered block and a whole street with no mains water. Daily emails and calls peppered with a liberal amount of swearing , personal insults and threats. There's a reason Housing came out as number 3 in the UKs most stressful jobs in the UK this year.

Unfortunately you will have to cover your back and just respond with a stock reply " the contents of your email have been noted. As I explained on xxxxx , I will be in touch with you once xxxx. The Ombudsman will have you otherwise.

You've already responded and explained the process so stop responding.

She can't unfortunately, she will be hammered by the complaints team and the Ombudsman for not following her own companies ( ridiculous) procedures around communication

So it's company policy to answer streams of emails repeating the same information?

It will be company policy to respond to communication within a specified timescale.

She has. She's responded to the residents explaining the situation and what will happen next.

If you type a standard response in a word document saying something like

Your email has been noted and forwarded to the housing officer responsible for the decision…. Etc.

It will take you less than a minute to copy and paste this onto a reply to them. You will have met your response target and eventually they will understand that they, like everyone else, are subject to a process.

If you aren’t cc’ing the people who can actually get things done then do so, if only so they are aware how persistent the customers are

Can you say you won't be responding to any further emails until X date, or unless you have anything to update them with in the meantime? That's what I would do. It's perfectly reasonable way to manage their expectations and not cause detriment to other customers who are waiting patiently for a reply to their email.

I get similar situations in work and really don’t know why you would find it so stressful. Just send a quick ‘unfortunately there is no up day and I will contact you when there is’ 2 mins job