When I was a mid-level retail manager, my philosophy was that my floor worker’s job was to take care of the customers, my store manager’s job was to take care of corporate, and my job was to facilitate both. The best way to do that most of the time was to take care of and protect my floor workers.
Most of the time the customer complaints were baseless. Sometimes they were legitimate. But in all cases my priority was taking care of my workers. I may have had to coach them on something after the complaint (usually on how to better handle asshole customers), but ALWAYS in private, and always calmly.
Sometimes I had to do something for the customer if there was a legitimate issue, like give them a $20 gift card or something.
But no matter what the situation was, if a customer was abusive to my staff they were banned from the store on the spot. I’d trespass them, put their picture on a board for our greeters, and if they attempted to return we’d have polkce escort them away.
If they had been trying to buy a firearm (we were a massive destination outdoors store), we’d blacklist them in the corporate system and I had a text message group with all the nearby firearm dealers where we’d share the names of customers we’d blacklisted.
Nobody’s business was worth allowing my people to be abused. I didn’t care that we were losing a $20,000 sale - my staff was worth more than that, both from a basic humanity standpoint, and also because having a good, experienced, loyal employee is more important than having an unreliable asshole customer. And you don’t retain good employees if you don’t protect them.
When I was a mid-level retail manager, my philosophy was that my floor worker’s job was to take care of the customers, my store manager’s job was to take care of corporate, and my job was to facilitate both. The best way to do that most of the time was to take care of and protect my floor workers.
Most of the time the customer complaints were baseless. Sometimes they were legitimate. But in all cases my priority was taking care of my workers. I may have had to coach them on something after the complaint (usually on how to better handle asshole customers), but ALWAYS in private, and always calmly.
Sometimes I had to do something for the customer if there was a legitimate issue, like give them a $20 gift card or something.
But no matter what the situation was, if a customer was abusive to my staff they were banned from the store on the spot. I’d trespass them, put their picture on a board for our greeters, and if they attempted to return we’d have polkce escort them away.
If they had been trying to buy a firearm (we were a massive destination outdoors store), we’d blacklist them in the corporate system and I had a text message group with all the nearby firearm dealers where we’d share the names of customers we’d blacklisted.
Nobody’s business was worth allowing my people to be abused. I didn’t care that we were losing a $20,000 sale - my staff was worth more than that, both from a basic humanity standpoint, and also because having a good, experienced, loyal employee is more important than having an unreliable asshole customer. And you don’t retain good employees if you don’t protect them.