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This item is filed under these categories:
Terminations Fear Fairness Policies and Procedures Customers Satisfaction

I work in a transportation reservation department. We deal with irate customers only and were told that if a complaint letter is received and our name is mentioned, we would be terminated. Now we are terrified and come to work each day stressed and worried that we could lose our jobs. Does management have the right to address an entire department this way and threaten jobs?



It sounds like you should have reservations about working in this reservation department. By basing their policy on employee performance and applying it equally to everyone in your department, management may have the right to implement such a policy, but that does not make the policy right.

Management is obviously concerned about customer satisfaction and has adopted an aggressively negative policy to attempt to force the employees to maintain positive customer service. The problem is that this approach will also force the employees to become increasingly stressed, insecure, and dissatisfied, and this will ultimately undermine customer service, and a lot more.

The fact is that any customer can write a letter of complaint. This complaint may be justified, or may just as easily be the ranting of a chronic complainer. It makes far more sense for management to implement a policy that calls for a review, investigation, and discussion of these letters, rather than making a knee-jerk determination and termination.

Although it is important for management to place a great deal of attention on customer satisfaction, this does not mean that management should ignore employee satisfaction.



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