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Working in a job where you deal with members of the public is entirely different to one where you’re situated in the office dealing with suppliers and business contacts. When people are outside of the confines of their work environment, they tend to let their hair down and their professional conduct can end up being less than congenial. Things that people would never do in front of their employer become acceptable in their minds, even if other people are trying to be professional and get a job done around them.
Here are a few of the specific challenges that people deal when they have a customer-facing job.
Nurses Face Unique Challenges
Nurses must deal with a variety of different issues when working in their jobs. They deal with administration staff, doctors, and other nurses, along with patients, their relatives and friends too. While the number of nurse problems may not seem significant to some people, the risks are considerable. Being a good visual communicator is important in nursing because you’re dealing with unwell people and concerned relatives. Being able to empathize and show emotion while still doing your job is a difficult balancing act.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration tracks workplace safety and segments the data by industry. They found that in 2011 alone there were over 58,000 injuries or illnesses for people working in hospitals. The data included nurses injured by patients or their friends who turned violent, getting sick themselves when treating an ill patient, or sustaining an injury while lifting a patient onto a bed. Exploring caregiver injury violence cases will help you learn more about these challenges.
Working Retail
Being a worker in a retail store has its own set of unique problems. For one thing, being on your feet all day when getting caught sitting down on the job is seen as a big no-no means the legs, knees, feet, and ankles take the strain. The instance of feet taking the brunt of the damage through blisters and more serious ailments because of overuse and heat retention issues is commonplace.
The older one gets while working in retail, the harder it gets. Bending down to retrieve something from a lower shelf can cause knee joint pain, ankle pain, or strain the back if lifting a box while using bad posture. There are many older people working at Walmart and elsewhere, but they tend to be greeters at the entrance rather than working in the stock room or filling shelves where crouching down is frequently needed.
Working in retail also has the challenge of dealing with the public. We all start believing that everyone is like us, but we quickly discover that the public is more akin to a Noah’s Ark than disorganized and undisciplined. It’s necessary to use auditory, body language and visual cues from each customer to quickly determine what they need and whether there’s a threat to be worried about. Dealing with people who are friendly, quirky, downright weird and everything in between tries the patience while you are attempting to smile, be friendly and genuinely helpful. And sometimes people can be scary too.
Language Difficulties
Whether talking to someone who’s from out of state or another country entirely, understanding each person that approaches with a question isn’t always easy. In most cases, even though their accent is different, and their understanding of English may be middling at best, people tend to rattle off what they want to say at a rapid pace.
It’s often necessary to use visual cues to try to interpret what is said to avoid having to ask them to repeat themselves or speak more slowly. Even when asking people to speak slower, if they do adjust their talking speed, they pick it back up within a sentence or two. At this point, you have to use all your powers of interpretation while picking up visual clues and communicating with hand movements and pointedly looking in the direction you’re referring to, in combination, to try to overcome the language barrier.
Cultural Differences
Sometimes, seemingly similar cultures still cause confusion for customers. For instance, one time I was out at a restaurant with a distant family cousin who lives in England. While we were ordering our food and beverages, the waitress brought over two glasses of chilled, still water. This caused my English cousin to refuse the water because he thought that he was being brought something he hadn’t ordered.
The cultural confusion was a simple one. It’s not a standard practice to bring water to people at a restaurant in the UK while they wait for the drinks and meal that they’ve ordered. Therefore, my cousin found it odd and confusing why this happened and what the purpose of it was. After he visited several restaurants during his stay, he got used to the idea, but initially, both the waitress and myself were confused what his problem was. Even seemingly similar cultures can have cultural misunderstandings crop up due to differences in behavior and dissimilar expectations.
Dealing with Inherent Biases
One of the other challenges for people who deal with customers directly is that every person brings their baggage along with them. A man may feel like a woman won’t deliver the high-quality service he expects; his sexist opinions color his expectation of her, regardless of merit. Or, there can be a bias connected to race relations where confusion over expectations or a general distrust of another race quickly turns into a customer service issue.
Skilled public-facing workers have seen it all over the years and learned the best ways to overcome the baggage that people drag along behind them, which affects how they see the world and how they interact within it.
Working on your feet, dealing with customers directly, is often exhausting. Not only do you get home feeling dog tired from not being able to sit down, but you must talk (and listen) much more than you do in an office environment where you can just get on with your work. It’s important to get your weekends off to recover, otherwise, it’s a recipe for burnout that will affect how you deal with customers in the future when you’re so fatigued.