Council defines a customer as a person who is a customer, complainant, constituent or member of the public using or attending council facilities.
Council recognises that customers have the right to question and/or complain about issues that affect them. This could be about the core issue/s of their matter, how it was handled or its outcome.
Unfortunately, for some customers exercising those rights, their mindset can lead to escalated behaviour including aggressive and abusive conduct towards the organisation and staff handling their matters. We call this Unreasonable Customer Conduct (UCC).
A customer’s behaviour is not necessarily unreasonable just because it is seen as challenging or difficult to manage. Council defines UCC as any behaviour by a current or former customer which, because of its nature or frequency, raises substantial health, safety, resource or equity issues for council, councillors, council officers, other customers or the customer themselves.
UCC is divided into five categories:
- unreasonable persistence
- unreasonable demands
- unreasonable lack of cooperation
- unreasonable arguments
- unreasonable behaviours.
Identifying customer conduct in terms of behaviours assists council, councillors and its officers to avoid labelling customers and subsequently treating them as a label (e.g. serial complainant). Recognising UCC behaviours and separating them from the person makes it easier to step back and consider an approach to the management of both the behaviours and any personal issues that may have contributed to the UCC.
Council’s primary objectives in managing UCC are to:
- ensure equity and fairness through appropriate allocation of resources based on merits, rather than demands or conduct
- improve efficiency and commitment to appropriate resource allocation by providing awareness of the consequences of failing to deal with UCC
- protect the health and safety of councillors, officers, customers (including members of the public) and other affected persons.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to managing UCC. Council’s responses to UCC will, as far as is practicable, allow the individual or group involved in the UCC to continue to communicate with council in a controlled and appropriate manner which will support council’s zero-tolerance approach to occupational violence.
The following provides general advice on initial actions which may be taken, including but not limited to:
- under a safe working procedure, intervene and de-escalate the customer’s behaviour using the standard de-escalation techniques
- advise that no further assistance can be provided and end the face-to-face interaction
- provide a verbal warning and end a phone call
- escalate the matter to a supervisor
- moving away from the situation to a safe position
- request the customer leave council premises
- have the customer removed from council premises (which may include security/Queensland Police Services involvement)
- escalate if the conduct threatens the immediate well-being of a councillor, council officer or another customer and follow safe working procedures. QPS may need to be called in these circumstances by phoning 000.
If the incident is considered UCC and cannot be managed by councillors or officers using initial actions, the matter is escalated to the Complaints Management Team (CMT).
When responding to referred UCC the CMT will:
- assess whether conduct is reasonable
- categorise conduct
- consider and select strategies to manage the UCC if it can’t be managed initially by the operations or councillors either under a safe working procedure or by issuing a ’warning letter’ to the customer
- conduct a Human Rights Impact Assessment on any considered strategy
- communicate in writing to the customer any implemented strategies
- assess and respond to any objection (appeal) raised by a customer being managed under a UCC strategy
- advise all relevant stakeholders within council of any implemented strategies, including activating caution notes on customer profiles
- conduct reviews on implemented strategies when required
- record and report on all referred UCC cases
- provide ‘learnings’ with recommendations to the relevant operational areas following the resolution of a referred UCC to facilitate continuous improvement in the management of UCC.
More information on how council will manage UCC can be found in the Unreasonable Customer Conduct Management - Complaints Management Unit Procedure(PDF, 582KB)