Abuse

[HenryHoover]

Is it just me, or is the amount of abuse we're having to put up with now getting a little silly?

I'm a team manager, and I've spent my day (my entire 8 hour shift as duty manager) getting abuse from customers and backing colleagues up where they've been threatened. One colleague was racially abused (so I asked the customer to leave as we weren't prepared to serve them). Customer goes on about customer is always right etc (they stunk of alcohol) and called Dundee. Dundee emails SM, who gives me a let's talk for refusing to serve the customer and affecting the customer viewpoint score.

Is anyone else finding the business just aren't backing us up? I'm fed up of it. Me and my colleagues have been spat at, threatened with weapons, everything. We put on incident reporting. Nothing ever happens. Is it the same everywhere?

[Long gone]

Go to ACAS about it. Your store manager sounds like a complete idiot

[Nowanexmgr]

Your SM is an idiot. You need to request a lets talk to discuss his latest actions with you and for God's sake get in the notes the question "are you saying to me that I should have accepted racist behaviour towards a colleague? Is that official tesco policy now boss?"

Make sure his reply is also in the notes.

Do not, under ANY circumstances, accept being told you have to serve abusive racist customers. You do not. If this fails ensure you contact your SD and give them all the details and also ask them the same questions you asked the SM.

Let us know how you get on.

[Me2015]

[Call me]

Protector line. That is all

[NightAndDay]

Rather than Tesco streamlining their bottom line, they should  1. Revise the customer feedback process, if any customer complaint is taken at face value and reprimands are dished out without investigation into the alledged incident, then it clearly doesn't work, the same goes for customer viewpoint ratings. Customer complaints in-store are best dealt with in-store, not by some head office wonk or someone in a call centre thousands of miles away from the store who only knows the customers version of events. 2. Get rid of the Dundee call centre as they don't add any value to the business, or at least downsize and make it just deal with complaints regarding dot com and online deliveries.

[londoner83]

Customer Viewpoint is largely fake as too many colleagues get friends and family to make up positive stories about them.

The colleagues in Dundee seem too far removed from instore processes and reluctant to back store colleagues. Anyone verbally or physically abusing staff should lose their right to make any complaint.

[penguin]

Dundee are pathetic, always take the customers side and expect staff to take whatever abuse a customer wants to throw at them because an extra few quid  in the till is more important than staff being treated decently, we had a staff member a few years ago called a freak by a customer who then started screaming homophobic abuse at him, duty arrived and to be fair told the customer to leave, customer went straight out to his car got on his phone and complained, duty was asked to go outside and say sorry to said customer, he refused and it got passed onto store manager who said no further action as he was fairly old school and would back you up if you were in the right, can only guess what our current walkover of a store manager would have done, no doubt got  a red carpet and big goodwill gesture to get the customer back in the shop.

[NightAndDay]

What actually happens if the SM refuses and the customer complains again, as far as I know superstore SM is the highest work level you can get before Head Office levels, so who would reprimand the superstore sm?

[penguin]

Would assume it would then be escalated to the store managers boss, so area manager in express or metro, S.D in superstore and extra. Although unless its something really really serious you would think the store mangers word would be final.

[madness]

Dundee call centre. Useless glorified secretarys.

[Redshoes]

Biggest issue I see here is a manager has made a decision in store that has been overridden by a call centre assisistant who does not have on the spot knowledge. Who do they think they are not listening to a manager in store and dictating to a store manager about what they should do.
It looks like the call centre is chasing targets and resolving issues but at our expense. We recently had a call about a customer complaining they were refused alcohol sales due to being drunk, they rang call centre NEXT DAY to complain. What has happened to you say no we say no.

[taliahad]

What tesco forget in all this is that we're customers too, so are our friends, family and neighbours.  If someone close to you gets grief there, it's going to put you off shopping there.  If a youngster comes in and gets grief there, they'll remember that in the future.  In addition to that, this knee jerk reaction of blaming the staff doesn't help anyone in their attitude to their job.