The Abusive Customer: Breaking the Silence Around Customers' Aggressive Behavior

This book provides insights into the triggers of customer aggression against service employees, explores its consequences, and offers practical advice for handling abusive customers and mitigating the damage they inflict. It is based on academic research and includes useful tools such as an anti-customer abuse policy, management process, cheat sheet, service recovery processes, and training list.

Format: Hardback
Length: 228 pages
Publication date: 18 August 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Breaking the silence around an all-too-common problem, this book offers insightful revelations into the triggers of customer aggression against service employees, delves into its far-reaching consequences, and provides practical guidance for effectively handling abusive customers and mitigating the damage they inflict. In today's world, where over half of the global population is engaged in the service sector, the demand for exceptional customer service has reached unprecedented heights. This fundamental economic shift is accompanied by a heightened focus on the 'customer is always right' paradigm. However, when customers resort to aggressive behavior, the repercussions are felt by everyone involved: frontline employees, their families, their companies, and even the abusive customers themselves. Unlike more casual titles on the subject, this book is grounded in rigorous academic research, delving into the underlying reasons and circumstances that lead to abusive behavior. Through real-world stories from professionals at the forefront of customer service, the book offers a practical and actionable approach, backed by evidence-based insights. Its valuable tools include a sample anti-customer abuse policy and management process, a cheat sheet of effective practices for managing its consequences, a summary of effective service recovery processes and practices, and comprehensive abuse-handling training list and curriculum templates. Managers and workers in customer-facing roles, spanning industries such as retail, hospitality, tourism, banking, and contact centers, will warmly embrace this essential resource as a vital component of their efforts to curb aggressive customer behavior, enhance employee morale, job satisfaction, and engagement.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032515069