By J. N. HALM
We are not in the very best of times. People are under a lot of financial pressure. What this means is that a lot of people are on edge, including your customers. Even the mildest individuals will flip at the slightest provocation. It has been said that the tension within and between individuals came to a head at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. With lives being lost at alarming rates, it was understandable that people were not going to be in the best of emotional and mental states. Although the pandemic is behind us, or at least, the worst of it is far behind us, there is still a lot of tension in the air. The general economic conditions as well as the rising tensions as Elections 2024 draws close have all added to the tension in the system.
One of the pieces of evidence of the growing tension is incivility. A February 2024 article in the online version of Forbes magazine alluded to the fact that there was an increase in incivility in the workplace. The long list of examples of incivility at the workplace included ignoring others or giving them the silent treatment, withholding important information coworkers need, refusing to answer questions, emotional put-downs, and sending unpleasant (nasty, hateful) emails or letters.
It also included sabotaging someone’s work, spreading false rumors, giving dirty looks in meetings, checking emails during meetings or failing to pay attention, taking credit for others’ work, and being disruptive. Even rolling eyes at someone’s comments, losing one’s temper, back-stabbing, repeatedly showing up late to meetings, not acknowledging someone, and not saying thank you were all considered examples of incivility at the workplace.
It goes without saying that if there is a growing incivility in the population and the workplace, there will also be a corresponding increase in incivility among a business’ customers. It is important to understand that customer incivility, much like incivility among colleagues at work, is not violence.
Although incivility and violence are both intended to hurt the recipient, customer incivility is more about using words to hurt an employee. This is why customer incivility is usually manifested as angry words from customers directed at employees, condescending remarks, or personal verbal attacks. Customer incivility has been defined by some as “low-intensity deviant behaviour perpetrated by customers.”
If customers employ incivility to hurt employees, these customers mostly succeed in their attempts. It has been found that incivility towards employees leads to emotional exhaustion and burnout. No matter how calmly a customer service professional reacts to the deviant behaviours of customers, there is always an emotional price to pay. It gets to the employee.
Apart from emotional exhaustion, withdrawal is another symptom of customer incivility. It has been argued that withdrawal could actually be a response to emotional exhaustion. An offended customer service professional will coil into his or her shell. Some professionals will even decide to disengage from the rest of the team.
Because of the professionalism demanded of those employees who serve customers, it is difficult for them to openly speak out against deviant customers. In other words, customer service employees are expected to “keep it all in”. This is what eventually leads to burnout among customer-facing employees. The stress from the job can be so overwhelming that it takes a psychological toll on the individual. There are even reports that customer incivility leads to absenteeism and also turnover. All these lead to diminished sales performance.
Customer incivility eventually leads to poor customer service, and by extension, poor customer experience. It should be expected that a stressed-out professional will struggle to give out a great performance. No matter how well-trained the professional is, when the incivility continues to a certain level, the one’s performance will be affected.
The psychological toll on professionals can be sometimes so devastating that some have simply walked away from the job, just to preserve their sanity. High turnover among stressed-out front-line workers is something that is almost a norm. This is especially true with employees in low-paying jobs such as waiters and bar attendants.
Due to the importance of customer incivility, customer-facing professionals must be aware of the times we are in and make the right adjustments to their behaviours. One of the behaviours that researchers are calling for is what they refer to as “Conflict-solving Behaviour”. The importance of conflict-solving as a way of managing customer incivility is declared in a study published in the June 2022 edition of the Service Industries Journal. The title of that particular study is “Conflict-Solving As A Mediator Between Customer Incivility And Service Performance”.
Incivility eventually breeds conflict and this is why conflict-solving behaviour is of such importance. Simply put, conflict-solving behaviours are actions that service employees engage in to reduce tension and friction with customers. If customer service employees are unable to manage the conflict that arises out of customer incivility, the result will be a deterioration in the relationship and this would ultimately lead to the loss of the customer’s business. It is expected of customer-handling employees that no matter how angry a customer gets, they engage in actions that reduce tensions and friction between the organisation and the customer.
Conflict management has always been a big issue when it comes to the workplace. The truth is that wherever people congregate, there are always going to be challenges. Even one person can have internal conflicts, therefore put two or more people in the same room, and there are bound to be conflicts. For this reason, conflict management must be an important part of every organisation’s operations. Whether at the unit, department, or the whole organisation, employees must know what to do when there are conflicts.
In talking about conflict management, the first thing is to recognize that the individual employee’s natural inclination also plays a crucial role in the way the person manages conflict. In this sense, people can be grouped into two broad categories. Some are prevention-focused and some are promotion-focused.
Prevention-focused individuals tend to be motivated by an avoidance of loss. When faced with conflict, prevention-focused employees will attempt to conserve their energies and mental resources. They are therefore more likely to become withdrawn. It has been explained that these individuals engage in withdrawal as a way of conserving their energy. Researchers refer to this as Resource Conservation. One noticeable exhibition of this is that these frontline professionals tend to speak less when confronted with customer incivility. Since engaging in voice behaviour will deplete their mental and physical resources, prevention-focused customer service professionals prefer not to engage verbally with the offending customer.
On the other hand, promotion-focused employees are those whose actions are motivated by a desire for gain. Whereas prevention-focused individuals engage in resource conservation, promotion-focused employees engage in Resource Acquisition. These individuals would rather invest their time, energy, and resources to renew their resources. This is how these individuals protect their existing resources and ensure that their resources are not depleted.
According to the above-referred study, promotion-focused employees are less adversely affected by customer incivility than prevention-focused employees and thereby can engage more effectively in conflict-solving behavior in the face of customer incivility. In other words, it pays to know the inclination of the individuals manning the front line of organisations. Not all front-line employees are best equipped to manage conflict.
It is also important for customer service employees to build strong relationships with their customers. This is because when employees build strong customer relationships, the strength of the relationship becomes relational capital that reduces the negative impact of customer incivility on conflict-solving behavior. In other words, a strong relationship with the customer weakens the effect of customer incivility on service performance.
The effect of customer incivility takes on an added importance when it occurs between individuals representing two businesses. In the business-to-business context, this could go beyond just the individuals involved in the negative exchanges. The effect of poor behaviour could escalate to the full-blown fracas that could end up in legal battles. This makes the ability to handle conflict a very important skill in the repertoire of customer-facing professionals. In the end, customer service professionals who can handle and manage conflict effectively are needed, if an organisation wants to stay on top of the game.
It is a truth that no one likes conflict and thus conflict should be avoided as much as possible. However, it is equally true that without some kind of conflict, customer service performance will not be at the level it is supposed to be. When conflict occurs, it forces frontline professionals to employ resources such as empathy and professionalism to resolve the conflict. If conflict resulting from customer incivility is not addressed adequately, this can hamper service performance, but if handled effectively, service performance can benefit. A successful resolution of the conflict has the potential to lead to higher levels of customer satisfaction.
It can even be argued that without conflict and a corresponding ability to resolve it successfully, some supervisors will not give good customer service professionals their due. According to studies and in my experience, service employees who handle conflict effectively are viewed by their supervisors as caring, customer-oriented, and competent. What this does is that it leads to more positive ratings on service performance from managers. One can therefore confidently say that conflict might be bad. However the ability to effectively handle conflict can really be good for business.
