Blog - How to Manage Threatening Situations with Customers

Introduction

Re-opening your business in a world where vaccination status has become a divisive tool isn't easy. You may be concerned about the new role your staff may be expected to perform as ‘Vaccine Police’. Or you may be worried about threatening behaviour your staff may experience on the frontline of your business, whether in a pandemic or not. Threatening behaviour towards your staff is not acceptable and it’s your obligation as an employer to keep your staff safe from all hazards as much as you possibly can.

In this blog post, we will look at ways of ensuring your staff are kept safe mentally and physically from threatening behaviour and how to manage these situations. 

What Are Threatening Situations With Customers?

Staff can feel frightened or concerned when customers start to behave erratically or aggressively. It can be sudden or slow to start, the threatening customer behaviour may include:

• Pointing at your staff

• Raising their voice 

• Swearing 

• Shouting or screaming

• Saying they will do certain things that make your staff feel unsafe

• Breaking of things, pushing over, or physically moving of items that feels scary

• Pushing or hitting staff

How to Manage Threatening Behaviour 

If you have a small business, it is likely you already have a risk assessment. (Well, if you don’t, you should!) It’s time to revisit this document (we have templates and checklists in our reopening e-guide.) Ask your staff for input, if for instance, it’s vaccine checking that is causing your staff to face threatening behaviour, then think of all the ways that the public and your staff could react to the request for Vaccination proof documentation.  Talk to staff and really imagine how your customers will respond to proving their vaccination when accessing your services.  Will some customers refuse to show documents? If so, how will your staff handle this, especially if some staff members are not confrontational types. Consider the personalities in your team and if possible, move people around to more public-facing roles in the short term. The restrictions will pass, so reassure employees and employers just need to do what they can, whilst this phase is in place. 

• Risk Assessment - Consider what could happen and how badly/well vaccination requests could go in your business premises

• Write a Policy - Write a way of handling of any refusal of vaccination documents

• Implement the Policy - Utilise these ways of handling incidents

• Train Staff - Try to train staff on how to ask for documents, and what to do if refused

• Be Flexible - Move more confidant staff around if required 

• Be Alert - Vaccination is a tricky subject for some and be alert that some people may get angry, Have an emergency protocol in place. 

Other things to consider to manage threatening behaviour are:

• Prepare a safe operating procedure, so that staff are aware of how to handle aggression. 

• Set expectations with customers on the conditions of entry – this may include placing a notice on their entry point that aggressive behaviour will not be tolerated 

• Arrange a customer complaint policy for handling customer issues. 

It would be helpful to organise that staff have access to support services such as an EAP or counselling should they suffer any harm as a result of customer aggression. 

Consider how staff will verbally handle verbally angry behaviour. For instance, empathising with a customer can really help de-escalate a customer’s anger before it becomes threatening. When talking to an unhappy customer, consider these points:

• Respond - Apologise for any inconvenience to make the customer feel valued

• Empathise - Sincerely expressing that you understand the situation is frustrating 

• Reassure - Reassure the customer that if there was anything you could do, you would. 

• Paraphrase - Show you’re really listening by using something they say back “I understand you really need to have your hair cut for your sister’s wedding, that’s so important. Under the restrictions, I can’t proceed with the vaccine proof, unfortunately, even though I really want to help!”

Customers who are beginning to get angry will escalate quickly if they feel dismissed, not listened to or not valued. “I am so sorry for this inconvenience, this situation is so frustrating, if there was anything I could do, I absolutely would.” Its crucial to make sure a customer feels heard even if you may not agree with them and be sincere. 

Employers have a health and safety duty to minimise the risk of a hazard occurring in the workplace. 

 “Clients have told us they’ve already seen an increase in workplace violence over the past few months when enforcing COVID rules, and this is expected to get worse when workplaces open exclusively for the fully vaccinated,” 

 “While of course business owners need to comply with government health orders, putting them, as well as their young workers in the firing line of aggressive customers can be detrimental to their physical and mental wellbeing. It is more important now than ever before for business owners to be proactive and ensure the correct control measures are implemented to minimise the risk of physical and psychological harm in the workplace.” said Employsure senior health and safety manager Larry Drewsen.

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