“The customer is king” , “The customer is always right”.But at what cost to workers and society at large?
These and many other are some of the slogans that drive customer service. However, do we often stop and think on the flip side? How does the rudeness of a customer affect the customer service staff? Do organisations ensure that their customer service staff’s mental health is well taken care of?
When people walk in a store or call a call centre they generally range between being nice to absolutely lovely but there is still a small minority of people who are atrocious and make lives on frontline staff dreadful. In most circumstances frontline staff do not have a choice in how they have to serve such a customer. They are trained and instructed to be friendly, accommodating and agreeable at all times. They can not differentiate between nice or nasty customers and are expected to give their all, every shift. It’s their job! So, where’s the harm?
According to Deloitte, the average person spends 90,000 hours of their life working, and poor employee mental health can be due to factors internal or external to the workplace. On the other hand the company wants to gain or maintain the customer, the employee wants the work. All jobs have a bad side to them, after all. But is that bad side so easy to dismiss? Is the distinct minority of abusive customers having a more spiteful and harmful effect to society than we care to admit?
Being human beings we are more likely to focus on negative experiences than positive ones, particularly in terms of the way we are treated by others. It relates to our social status and so we are much more accustomed to criticisms or bullying than we are to compliments. And I don’t think there are too many jobs that can rival frontline staff for being perceived as low status. Hence the reason awful people feel they can insult them with impunity.
Usually businesses will focus on the ultimate goal of being in business which is making a profit. Some will go at all length to have customer experience as a differentiating factor and a unique selling point. But sometimes they is a sense of hypocrisy on how business react towards the care of frontline staff (customer service staff), the implementation of health and safety assessments in terms of physical well-being, but then actively training staff to behave in a way that damages their self-esteem needs to be recognised as a potential risk. Within every business, there will be those who suffer in silence to the point that control is lost and the very act of getting out of bed becomes utterly overwhelming. Employees are still reluctant to share mental health information with their managers or bosses, seemingly for good reason. The stigma associated with mental health, being treated unfairly, becoming the subject of office gossip or compromising their employment terms are all legitimate fears.
Here some of the things that businesses should put in place to ensure that the mental health of customer service staff is well planned and catered for;
- The first step is developing a healthy, all-inclusive culture in contact centres. Organisation should make it a priority to promote wellbeing, ensuring staff are given the opportunity to freely talk about any issues that they may have.
- Business need to recognise and prioritise mental health of contact staff by encouraging discussion, this is the first step to finding solutions, lowering absenteeism and more importantly supporting frontline staff to lead a better quality of life.
- Business need to review policies and procedures – are they effective in promoting well-being, or do they actually contribute to stress and anxiety? Robust policies are needed for challenging discriminatory or abusive behaviour such as bullying, and appropriate training can help staff to understand what is expected of them.
- Devise ways to ask people how they think your organisation can promote positive health and well-being. Involve them in developing their ideas and in monitoring the effectiveness of any new initiative.
Finally, just be there for your team and make sure they feel supported. Do this by offering a number of different support options to them, instead of forcing them down one route.
By Ngosa Chikaka MBA, BA, Dip. Marketing
Ngosa Chikaka is an all-encompassing marketing and communication professional with over 10 years’ experience in the education and service industry. She has a proven track record of developing, implementing and managing corporate brand positioning and communication for different target audiences. She has special interest in Service Marketing, Education Branding, Strategic Marketing, Customer Experience, Digital Marketing and Corporate Communications.