Managing Customer Violence Requires More Than a Talk About Robbery, Panic Buttons and Zero Tolerance!
The Prevention of Customer Violence Do you have customers that experience frustration over the following issues? Delays Negative decisions Payments Line ups Service Issues Discontinued service Enforcement Issues Fines Returned goods Even without performing a Risk Assessment for customer violence, it is reasonable to assume that these staff will likely be exposed to workplace violence as defined by most Provincial regulations. The fact is violence generally occurs on a continuum. Having reviewed hundreds of incident reports from virtually every industry sector, we find that incidents of violence, including imminent verbal threats or actual physical assaults are all too often a result of unsafe choices made by employees at the early stages of customer/client escalation. In addition to this, there is often a lack of realistic planning for safe response to escalated situations. If your workplace violence program consists of a brief talk about robbery, security plans, installation of panic buttons, review of incident reporting, checklists of warning signs of co-worker violence, a review of company policies along with some “paint by number” procedures, you may want to think again. Do you have staff that work alone, perform home visits, are exposed to customers or clients that may be intoxicated or have mental health issues, work in higher crime areas, work at night? These employees could face: Personal robbery Sexual assault Aggressive engagement from the street element Verbal threats Safety tips, cell phones, call in procedures, a zero tolerance policy and personal harassment training will have little to do with minimizing the potential for violence. Your staff likely need dynamic violence prevention training that will assist them to make safe choices in real life, real time and dynamic situations. With appropriate, relevant, job specific and practical workplace violence prevention training you should expect that your staff will experience less stress, increased confidence, enhanced service attitude, less customer abuse, fewer violent incidents as well as well as the organization will have taken reasonable steps (key steps) to minimize the potential for violence; due diligence. Employee safety is not achieved by checklists and a binder full of pages that somehow demonstrates that a violence program exists.
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