Our staff and our customers have the right to be heard, understood and respected.
When our people come to work, we ask them to place our customers’ needs at the heart of all that we do, this means:
- Our staff will actively listen to better understand your needs, we ask you to explain your needs in a calm and respectful manner
- Our staff will respond to those needs with empathy and compassion, we ask you to remember that our staff are people too
- Our staff will always try to work quickly to put things right, we ask you to be patient while we do so
We understand that dealing with issues that affect you and your home can be frustrating and worrying.
Please remember the way you express yourself has a real impact on our staff’s wellbeing.
We have a zero tolerance for abuse towards our staff and have empowered them to take action where they feel customer behaviour is unacceptable.
This applies to all areas of our work and to all methods of contact including telephone, face-to-face, letters, e-mails, social media and other digital channels.
Unacceptable behaviour includes:
- using bad language or swearing at our staff
- any physical violence or threats of physical violence
- language that is designed to insult or degrade, e.g. racist, sexist or homophobic
- verbally abusing our staff on telephone calls
- sexual harassment in any form
- abusing staff on our social media channels
Depending on the severity of the issue this may result in staff terminating your call and/or limiting customer communication methods. In more serious cases, we may need to contact Police Scotland.
