Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

Are 'Customer Service Saboteurs' Ruining Your Customer Experiences?

May 22, 2012

What's a “customer service saboteur”? Something every company should be wary of and have a plan to cope with. While it sounds very spy novel, it's a fairly simple concept. A customer service saboteur is someone who manages to put a dent into – or completely wreck – your other customers' customer experiences. It's the rude, obnoxious patron shouting into his cell phone all evening in your restaurant. It's the customer who makes impossible demands on multiple tellers during a bank transaction, forcing other companies to both wait and listen to the exchange. It's the guy who hasn't taken a shower since the last presidential administration shuffling through the aisles of your store, picking his nose and coughing like he has the plague.


Joel Anaya, a McNair scholar and a senior majoring in hospitality business management at Washington State University, told Fox Small Business Center that he has examined all the different types of shoppers who can have a negative impact on the shopping experiences of others. These include bad mouthers (people who perpetually and vocally object to your company or products), paranoid shouters (people incapable of controlling themselves, their anger or the situation), customers with poor hygiene, customers who make outlandish requests, service rule breakers (people who cut in line and show no respect for other customers), bad parents with bad kids (poorly controlled children can be prime customer service saboteurs), and unknowledgeable customers, or people who monopolize service personnel with questions and issues most people can answer or solve on their own.

Anaya told Fox Business that he recommends that companies pay particular attention to customers who may become saboteurs so they don’t affect the experience of other shoppers. Customer discontent can spread quickly if not handled up front.

“It just begins with the acknowledgment as managers to say to your employees, your front desks, your servers: 'Keep an eye out for them’,” Anaya said. “These are the type of people that exist. These are the types of people that may affect our service quality perception from other customers.”




Edited by Brooke Neuman



Home