Service and Experience: That’s rude–effects of customer incivility on front line employee performance Pt. 2
It is also important to realise that employees who had positive evaluations of themselves have also be found to be more satisfied with their jobs than those with negative core self-evaluations. I want to believe that their satisfaction with their job is something that will be able to keep the front line employee still in professional mode when dealing with impolite customers. If you love your job and part of your job comes with dealing with the occasional discourteous customer, I am pretty sure, you will be able to handle that. However, if you already have a problem with the job you have, then the slightest inconvenience can really set you off.
The truth is that rude behaviour, regardless of who exhibits it, has deleterious effects on the target individual. For instance, anger is one of the commonest effects of rude behaviour. An angry person is one who might not think right. When the one sees the red mist, it becomes very difficult for the one to see right. Therefore, when a customer is rude to a customer-facing employee, it would be easy for the employee to lose all of the one’s mental faculties out of anger. It takes a special well-trained and well-mannered individual to remain calm in the face of customer incivility.
It has also been found that self-doubt can also lead to a hindrance of the creativity of an individual. When individuals begin to have doubts in their own abilities, their ability to think creatively is curtailed. Therefore, at the front line, the employees who has been at the receiving end of a rude and uncivilised behaviour would be deprived all their ability to find creative solutions to the customer’s challenges, if the one is not super confident in the one’s own self-worth.
It is also an established fact that depression can result from receiving too much abuse and uncivilised behaviour from others. Many people are unable to handle so much abuse. They will crumble under such conditions. If the verbally abused is your average customer-handling employee, then the one can begin to exhibit signs of depression. This would definitely affect the quality of service the one will give to customers. The one will wake up and dread coming to work. If the one has no other choice than to report to work, then the one will do so reluctantly and the end result would be a morose and taciturn customer-handling employee.
Rude behaviour can also result in embarrassment and shame for the average customer-handling employee. This is especially true when the rude behaviour is done in the view of other customers. In this situation, the customer service employee might feel so terrible that he or she would not be able to give off of their best. Here again, it would take an individual with a tough skin to brush it all off and move ahead serving other customers, with a smile. As a matter of fact, by remaining calm, the service and experience professional takes away the power of the rude customer.
This discussion has direct implications for those whose job it is to bring new talent into the organisation. Human resource, personnel and talent managers must ensure that in recruiting new employees, they place an emphasis on how the prospects view themselves and their roles in the functioning of the world. Prospective employees who do not have a very high view of themselves would obviously struggle at the front line. When customers become rude, the quality of their output will suffer and that will end up negatively affecting the experience of other customers. Such individuals will not enjoy the work at the front line.
So really, what can a business, as a whole, do about rude customers? Very little, if you ask me. Some people are just rude by nature. All the business can do is to staff its front line with professionals who are confident in themselves, individuals who will not allow the behaviour of a few rude customers to cause them to deviate from their professionalism. This is because rude behaviour, if not handled well, has a penchant of perpetuating more rude behaviour.