Bad bosses don’t just make for an unpleasant work environment; they can lead to poor treatment of customers by frontline staff and, ultimately, harm an organization financially.
A UBC Sauder School of Business study found how employees react to rude customers was correlated to how they feel they are treated by their bosses. Employees who feel their bosses mistreat them will be more likely to exact a form of “revenge” by taking it out on the customer.
The study surveyed 579 employees at call centres around North America and in South Korea and found workers are often subjected to being yelled at or insulted by customers.
“Research shows that customer mistreatment of front-line employees is becoming increasingly common,” said Sauder School Professor Daniel Skarlicki.
Workers will often react to rude customers by being disrespectful to them in return – but they are much more likely to do this if they feel their bosses treat them unfairly.
“Supervisors of front-line service workers can be their own worst enemy,” Skarlicki said. “They think their job is about supervising, scheduling and facilitating.
“But really, they should see treating their employees with respect and dignity as an integral part of their job description; anything south of that will cause trouble.”
Some of the steps taken by those employees who said they they had unkind bosses were to purposely transfer customers to the wrong department or intentionally put them on hold for a long period of time.
“Ultimately bad treatment begets bad treatment, and when service quality erodes, it affects the bottom line.”
