What the Customers from Hell are Costing You

“Rough night, huh?”

Josie nodded, trying hard not to let Tyra see her cry.

It was Josie’s second week as a server at Miller’s Boardwalk — a popular seafood restaurant in the Outer Banks — but it was her first night working on her own. Tyra sat down next to Josie at the picnic table behind the restaurant, the closest thing Miller’s had to an employee break room.

“Go easy on yourself,” Tyra said as she lit a cigarette. “Everyone messes up an order here and there.”

“It’s not that,” Josie replied, her voice breaking, “I just … I just didn’t expect people to be so mean, you know?”

Tyra nodded. She had overheard a customer cursing at Josie for bringing the wrong salad dressing. Even worse, Josie had been waiting on Frank, a regular who was notorious for drinking too much and making filthy comments to female servers.

“And I’m sure Ryan was a big help,” Tyra said sarcastically.

When Josie had complained to her supervisor, Ryan, he had lectured her about the customer always being right.

“What you need to understand,” Ryan said, “is that these customers are on vacation.They’re going to talk to everyone they know about their trip. If we don’t make them happy, they’re going to tell 20 or 30 people back home not to come to Miller’s.”

Instead of backing Josie up, Ryan had apologized profusely to the customers who had harassed Josie and comped their meals.

“Ryan is the only man I know who lives in constant fear of Yelp reviews,” Tyra joked. “If he sees a customer with their phone out, he sweats like Freddy Kruger is after him.”

Josie laughed, but, in truth, she was not feeling much better. She mentally kicked herself for taking this job and wondered if it was too late to go back to work at her uncle’s laundry service. It was sweaty, miserable work, but at least she wasn’t treated like garbage there.

“If that salad dressing lady comes back,” Tyra said, “let me know. I’ll show you how we, uh, take care of special customers like that. As for Frank … well, you won’t get him every night.”

Josie’s break was almost over and she dreaded the idea of finishing her shift. More than anything in the world, she just wanted to run away from Miller’s Boardwalk and never come back.

Over the last several decades, researchers have conducted hundreds of studies on customer mistreatment — rude or abusive customer behavior directed at the employees who serve them. In 2019, three researchers — Maryana Arvan, Rachel Dreibelbis, and Paul Spector — conducted a meta-analysis of 72 of these studies. (A meta-analysis is a statistical technique for combining the results of many studies.) These studies had a combined sample size of 20,701 employees across a wide variety of industries and locations.

One of their findings was that employees who are mistreated by customers are more likely to experience emotional exhaustion — the feeling of being drained or worn out. Emotional exhaustion is a sign of burnout and can result in lack of energy and motivation, trouble sleeping, and feelings of hopelessness or loss of control.

Not surprisingly, they also found that employees who are forced to endure customer mistreatment are more likely to be dissatisfied with their jobs, their organizations, and their supervisors. They’re also more likely to make plans to leave their jobs (i.e., turnover intention).

Among employees who stay in their jobs, customer mistreatment is associated with poor customer service and counter-productive work behaviors directed toward customers and their employers. In other words, employees who are mistreated by customers may respond by treating customers poorly and engaging in theft, absence, tardiness, or sabotage. They’re also more likely to bully or harass their co-workers.

Takeaways for the HR Professional

We have an obligation to protect our employees from abuse and harassment. Good customer service is crucial for any business, but policies and practices that promote the idea that “the customer is always right” may lead employees to believe that they are expected to tolerate customer mistreatment.

Our policies should communicate a distinction between ordinary customer complaints and unacceptable customer behavior. These policies should be reinforced with training that helps employees see the difference between acceptable and unacceptable customer behavior. (Specific, concrete examples of both kinds of behavior can help drive the point home.)

We should also audit our compensation and incentive practices to ensure we aren’t rewarding employees and front-line managers for dismissing customer mistreatment in order to meet overly-aggressive customer satisfaction scores.

Employees should be told how to report concerns of customer mistreatment and these concerns should be addressed quickly and thoroughly. As with any other ethical or compliance concern, employees should be able to bypass the “chain of command” and report a concern to someone other than their immediate supervisor, if necessary.

Source

Arvan, M. L., Dreibelbis, R. C., & Spector, P. E. (2019). Customer Service Stress: A Meta-Analysis of Customer Mistreatment. Examining the Role of Well-being in the Marketing Discipline (Research in Occupational Stress and Well Being, Vol. 17).