Service with Respect ⋆ Institute of Customer Service

Addressing the hostility faced by front-line staff

With nearly 80% of the UK’s workforce working in customer-facing roles, mounting abuse is affecting staff across every sector – from retail to public services; financial institutions to our public transport networks.

Our research reveals more than half of customer-facing staff have experienced abuse from customers since the start of the pandemic – ranging from verbal abuse such as shouting and abusive language to, in the most extreme cases, physical assaults.

In July 2020 we launched our new campaign: Service with Respect. BBC Breakfast helped highlight this important issue, interviewing our CEO, Jo Causon, about the aims of the initiative.

On 8 December 2021, The Times published an abridged version of this open letter calling for action to tackle the issue of abuse against public-facing workers.

Following many months of campaigning, we have achieved one of the core aims of our Service with Respect campaign: a change in the law to protect customer-facing workers from abuse – find out more here.

Ian King Live (April 2022)

BBC Radio 4 Today (Dec 2021)

Institute of Customer Service · Service with Respect - BBC Radio 4 Today Programme 081221

Campaign supporters

Total employees

£0bn

Combined turnover

Campaign supporters

Join us in supporting the campaign

Parliamentary Champions

This amendment is a great success that addresses the concerns of workers providing a public service.

Thank you to @UsdawUnion and @instituteofcs for your tireless work on this.#CampaigningWorks #HouseofLords #PoliceBill pic.twitter.com/Hi7JIYTTaH
— Natalie Bennett (@natalieben) December 16, 2021

Pleased to support @instituteofcs #servicewithrespect campaign.

Essential workers - in supermarkets, doing deliveries, driving buses and many other roles - need to be treated with respect.

And their skills acknowledged and properly paid@LivingWageUK pic.twitter.com/fUCdvkPLAj
— Natalie Bennett (@natalieben) March 31, 2021

Since the start of #COVID19, more than half of customer-facing workers have experienced verbal or physical abuse at work.

In September, I’ll be bringing a motion to Parliament to make abuse of a frontline worker a criminal offence.

Together we can #EndTheAbuse ✊🏿✊🏼✊🏾 1/2 pic.twitter.com/w45x5FVidg
— Olivia Blake MP (@_OliviaBlake) August 19, 2021

Association and union supporters

What your organisation can do

We know from our research that the majority of staff feel well supported by their employer, but as we continue to face tough business conditions ahead, we urge all organisations not to let this fall by the wayside. We’re asking that organisations across all sectors:

support the campaign by displaying the logo and spreading the word on social media
adopt a zero tolerance approach to hostility and abuse against your employees
hold regular catch ups with your front-line staff and keep close to what is happening in their day – encourage them to report incidents
invest in appropriate training and tools for staff to handle the new (and increasingly challenging) duties they are being tasked with, and to deal with potential conflict as it arises

Show your support

Please show your support for this campaign – and the safety and wellbeing of all front-line workers – by displaying the campaign logo on your website.

Please also spread the message on social media using the hashtag #servicewithrespect and tag us @instituteofcs (Twitter) and @Institute of Customer Service Institute (LinkedIn).