Another Business ‘Golden Rule’

It’s one of the golden rules of business: Never be rude to a customer. And in a service-oriented business such as an insurance agency, it’s among the cornerstone ideals that managers should teach and reinforce constantly to all employees, be they new or long-serving ones.

But what about being rude to colleagues or other employees? No doubt, workplace incivility is something frowned upon in many offices, but occassionally, begrudgingly, in the heat of a stressful moment, it happens. Sometimes, it happens in front of customers. It can be inadvertent – an off-hand comment about the quality of a peer’s work or attention to detail, for instance – or very direct, such as name-calling. But it’s something that gets noticed, whether everyone realizes it or not.

And it turns out that businesses should be paying closer attention to intra-office civility. Why? Employees who badmouth their peers can bring down a business’s bottom line – at least, that’s according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. Researchers at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business found that employees’ rude behavior has a negative effect on how customers see a business.

Bad behavior in front of customers, the study’s authors say, is a whole lot more common than people realize. The study looked at a range of service industries – including restaurants, banks, government offices, retail stores and universities – and found that customers frequently witness employees behaving poorly toward one another. That included making derogatory comments and inappropriate gestures – such as the case of a store manager who called an employee an “idiot.”

What’s more: Clients who witnessed workplace incivility were faster to jump to negative conclusions about a company than those who witnessed employees behaving incompetently. To put it another way: Customers said they would rather deal with an incompetent businessperson than one who mistreats his or her co-workers. The researchers found that customers still harbored ill will toward a company even in instances when a rude employee was trying to help the customer.

And that goes for managers when they are discplining employees: In one example, customers who had to wait several minutes as an employee gossiped on the phone still formed negative impressions of the company when the employee was reprimanded rudely by another employee in front of them.

“One might anticipate that incivility directed at consumers has extremely negative effect(s),” wrote the authors, but “consumers are also negatively affected when they are mere observers of incivility between employees.”

The conclusion: It’s time to take a closer look at employee civility, said Deborah MacInnis, business professor at Marshall and one of the study’s authors. “Training employees to treat one another well enhances the bottom line because of its impact on customer behavior.”

Her recommendations? Emphasize civility in hiring and training, set zero-tolerance expectations and reprimand incivility before it festers.