Covid increasing aggression
Covid is fuelling a new aggressive customer that is breaking chains and unleashing itself on staff
Covid is helping to fuel an increase in aggression, and it’s not hard to understand why. At a global level you could throw down some song lyrics - “Seems like someone took a crack pipe, lit it with a torch light and threw it on a gas line”
Stressors and society issues are building in peoples lives and they taking these frustrations out ranging from angry protests, orchestrated vandalism and random acts of violence everywhere and all the way through to the supermarket checkout.
No one is immune to getting a dose of this verbal or physical aggression, from the bus driver to the retail worker, through to those working at the front line of the covid response like law enforcement, nurses and quarantine workers have been feeling the brunt of this covid fuelled aggression.
What is fuelling the aggression
The covid aggression, is a cocktail of ingredients that have been bubbling away for some time. It’s not necessarily the root cause but it is most definitely a key ingredient of a potential explosive cocktail that is increasing aggression and violence.
It’s already well demonstrated in North America, shown recently with anti government protests in Victoria, Australia and seen here in NZ with an increase of aggression in domestic homes through to angry and violent customers in the retail and hospitality sector.
The massive global economic fallout is plunging economies into recession. At a granular level this means people are been laid off, losing financial income, businesses are folding, and when the fiscal handouts stop the number of people losing their homes will increase. This is taking people to a breaking point - and at this point, some will turn to aggression and violence as a release.
As kiwis we live largely free of government controls. Not now, covid changed that. Locking down, moving up in alert levels, travel plans being disrupted, government controls, queuing for basics. All building stress in peoples lives, and the release of that stress for some is verbal and physical aggression.
You know the problem is real when the national manager of a NZ supermarket chain says that “middle NZ is abusing our staff, physically and verbally”
Aggressive Customer Awareness Training
This type of aggressive customer behaviour, fueled by covid shouldn’t be unexpected.
Educate your staff on it’s likelihood and put in place good practical training to manage it. Aggressive Customer awareness training courses are ideal for any business that has the potential for or a history of escalating aggressive customer situations.
The reality is, customer aggression is increasing. This is not the fault of your staff but they are the ones having to deal with it and are absolutely a factor in the ability to resolve the situation successfully.
Social conditions, financial stress, mental illness and poor customer experiences are all potential factors which become a situational reality for customer facing staff.
Face to face, retail, hospitality and banking are all types of industries that benefit from Aggressive Customer Awareness Training.
QRisk Aggressive Customer Awareness Training
QRisk Aggressive Customer Awareness training provides your staff with the tools to help identify the risk flag indicators and then provides a practical and easy framework to deal with all of those customer aggression scenarios.
The unique point of difference is in developing personal situational awareness as a life skill, as a core training outcome, meaning your staff will be much more empowered not only to deal with aggressive customer situations, but all of life’s risk’s as it relates to people safety and security,
Typically our Aggressive Customer Awareness Training will contain topics such as:
Understanding the importance of engaging an appropriate level of situational awareness as a life skill – the single most important skill for your safety and security
Understanding and applying the Q6 risk management model
Learn our three life skill guiding principles that support your enhanced levels of situational awareness – What if conversations | Hard Target | Sphere of influence
Apply our simple strategies to de-escalate an upset customer and avoid them become an aggressive customer - they are different
Aggressive Customer Awareness Training gives caring people leaders an opportunity to move beyond the legal obligations of providing a safe working environment, by enhancing personal and team safety and security through the QRisk aggressive customer and situational awareness training.
QRisk Aggressive Customer Awareness Training - Feedback
We have received fantastic feedback over the years regarding our Situational Awareness and Aggressive Customer Awareness Training. We look forward to bring this same expertise to your organisation
‘The content is brilliant, such wonderful life skills and advice for everyone to incorporate into their everyday lives. Our team found the material so beneficial are still discussing it regularly. Such wonderful facilitators, from the moment they started speaking they had the entire room captivated. They use gritty real life situations we can all identify with and situations that started out as ones we have all been in. The feedback we had from our team was phenomenal, they were blown away that we as a company cared enough about their personal safety to make such an investment. They appreciated immensely that we invested the time and resource in teaching them to be more aware and protect themselves. For any company considering investing in this training for their team, I strongly recommend it. What an amazing and eye opening course” - Amy Buller - People Leader Overland Footwear