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The Abusive Customer

Breaking the Silence Around Customers’
Aggressive Behavior
by Ivaylo Yorgov

“The Abusive Customer” provides a comprehensive examination of customer aggression against service employees, uncovering the triggers behind abusive behavior and exploring its far-reaching consequences. Grounded in academic research, the book offers a practical approach to empower service professionals in handling abusive customers effectively. 

Customer abuse leads to negative emotions, which in turn exhaust employees and increase turnover intentions, ultimately leading to actual turnover.

What’s Inside

Shedding light on the prevalence and impact of abusive customer behavior in the service sector

Understanding the psychological drivers that lead customers to act aggressively

Examining the emotional toll on frontline workers and its implications on job satisfaction and morale

Exploring the financial costs of customer aggression for businesses and brand reputation

A sample anti-customer abuse policy and management process to implement in organizations

Tools and templates, including a cheat sheet for handling abusive customer consequences and abuse-handling training list and curriculum

What Readers Say

A very useful book for people working in customer service, customer experience, marketing, etc – it explores the extent of aggressive customer behaviour and its negative impact on a company’s most important resource – its employees. The second half of the book offers practical and structured tips on dealing with this phenomenon.
 

Mila Krasteva

Marketing Director

In the world of customer service, the old saying “The customer is always right” is often taken as gospel. However, Ivaylo’s compelling “The Abusive Customer” challenges this mantra, exposing the deeper, often overlooked costs borne by frontline staff, their loved ones, businesses, and even the aggressive customers themselves.

In an era obsessed with optimizing the customer experience, “The Abusive Customer” emerges as a crucial counterpoint. It’s a reminder that behind every counter, every call, and every service interaction is a human being deserving of respect and dignity.

Avgustina Pasheeva

Director Technology

From the perspective of an HR Director and my psychological background, I think “The Abusive Customer” is a total game-changer. Ivaylo doesn’t just scratch the surface here – he dives deep into the nitty-gritty of customer aggression against service employees. He’s not afraid to challenge the status quo, questioning the whole notion that customers hold all the power. He’s saying, “Yeah, customers are important, but employees matter just as much.” And honestly, that’s a message that needs to be heard. Kudos to Ivaylo Yorgov for tackling a tough topic with such finesse.

Petya Popova

HR Director

Video Interview

Release Date: 01 Sept 2023
Duration: 1 hr

About The Author

Ivaylo Yorgov is a customer experience and analytics leader with over 15 years of experience in the domain, integrating business and academic research to offer evidence-based insights to his clients. He is the author of “The New Customer Experience Management” (Routledge/Taylor and Francis), which urges companies to evolve to a new mode of working with their customers: proactively supporting customers to create more value after the purchase, and offers examples, recommendations, and a roadmap for achieving this.
Ivaylo is currently the Managing Director of a customer analytics company (GemSeek), overseeing its customer success teams.

Ivaylo Yorgov

Invite Ivaylo To Talk About Abusive Customers