PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS
Penny Wolff is the Co-founder of Wolff Coffee Roasters.
Putting the spotlight on customer aggression Penny Wolff of Wolff Coffee Roasters discusses rising customer aggression during COVID-19 and how to address it.
T
he old adage goes ‘the customer is always right’ but most people in the service industry will tell you that’s often not the case. Following two years of lockdowns, restrictions, and mandates, cafés are trying to get back in the swing of things, but many are facing another problem: customer aggression. Working in the foodservice industry, customer aggression is something you expect to sometimes deal with. However, it seems that COVID-19 has escalated the number and seriousness of incidents that café workers are experiencing. We’ve been lucky at Wolff Coffee Roasters to have not seen too many instances of customer aggression over COVID-19, but speaking with many other business owners, it’s become clear it’s a growing problem. Despite it never being acceptable behaviour, there may be a few reasons for this aggression towards foodservice staff. The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened emotions across the community, people are more stressed and on edge than usual. Some customers don’t understand or aren’t happy about following mandates we haven’t chosen to put in place but must enforce. Many businesses across Australia are also struggling to find experienced
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The relationship between the customer and café worker has changed over COVID-19, which in some cases is contributing to increased customer aggression.
workers, putting additional pressure on existing employees or having to rely on unexperienced workers. This means longer wait times and less comprehensive service for customers. But something was telling me there was something deeper influencing customers behaviour. I spoke to a friend of mine Professor Gary Mortimer, an academic at the Queensland University of Technology,
he has recently conducted research in consumer behaviour, and he suggested another possible psychological cause for customer aggression during COVID. Typically, the customer and the service worker take a master-servant relationship. The customer tells the worker what they want, and the worker gets it. Now, when the customer walks in the door, the first thing that happens is the worker telling
