June 2025 marks an important milestone for us; one that we wished to honour with a parliamentary reception within the halls of Westminster, along with a timely call to action for organisations and Government alike.
The event marked five years since the launch of our Service with Respect campaign, which shines a light on unacceptable abuse and hostility against customer service professionals and pushes for meaningful change from business, Government, and wider society.
We invited cross-sector CEOs, business leaders, Parliamentarians, trade unions and trade bodies – many of whom are longstanding supporters of the campaign – for an evening of discussion and knowledge sharing, with a focus on how we can work together to protect all public-facing workers from abuse.
It was also an opportunity for us to reiterate our calls on Government to introduce strong, deterrent-led legislation to protect customer-facing workers across all sectors, on businesses to adopt a zero-tolerance approach to abuse of any kind, and for customers to check their behaviour and treat our frontline workers with respect.
The event was kindly sponsored by Tom Rutland MP, and opened by Bill Esterson MP, who spoke with passion about the importance of customer service workers to social cohesion and economic growth in the UK, and the need for them to be able to do their jobs free of abuse and hostility.
Our CEO, Jo Causon was next to welcome everyone and run through why we had brought this influential group together this evening. Jo discussed our latest research as part of our campaigning which shows rising levels of abuse, alongside increased sick leave taken as a result. Significantly, 4 in 10 UK customer service workers who face abuse consider quitting as a result, demonstrating a looming issue for businesses looking to grow their service offering – on top of the real, human impact of frequent abuse.
Jo also used this moment to welcome the upcoming Crime and Policing Bill, which will introduce a standalone offence for assaults on retail workers. She stressed, however, that as it stands the bill does not protect all customer-facing workers, such as those working in call centres, delivering our goods, or providing us with vital infrastructure and utilities.
She called on Government to extend the standalone offence to protect all public-facing workers, no matter their role or the context they are working in.
Following this, we had Health & Safety Director of Openreach, Adam Elsworth, join us to talk about the growing issue in the telecoms and infrastructure sector. With over 20 years of experience in his profession, Adam discussed how steeply the issue of customer abuse has grown recently, highlighting some severe cases of abuse faced by colleagues simply trying to do their jobs.
This testimonial brought to life the data we have collected in a tangible way, highlighting further the urgent need for better protections.
Following this was an evening of insightful and purposeful discussions about what more all attendees can do, as business and societal leaders, to combat this issue and create a better and safer environment – not least for our customer-facing workers, but also for UK society as a whole.
The Institute will continue to campaign for Service with Respect, and for a world where customer service is seen as a safe and respected profession vital to society and to the UK’s economic success. Here’s to the next five years and to the positive change we can all help to bring about.
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