So far in 2010, 26 people have been arrested for making violent threats to customer service call center employees at JEA, the electric utility that serves Jacksonville, Florida. Beyond rude, more than testy, these calls are threatening. I’ve heard a few examples broadcast on the local news. They’re pretty scary.

There is as much defense for these whack jobs as there is for Congress slipping student loan legislation into the health care bill, which is to say, none…zero…nada. I don’t care how bad the utility’s service is (it sometimes is), how outrageously high people’s bills are (they are), or how frustrated the customers may be. You can’t call up the electric company and threaten to come down there and drown their employees in the Saint Johns River.

HOWEVER… the fact that so many people have, in less than three months, crossed the line from righteous indignation to criminal behavior…is the predictable outcome of a flawed policy.

The Policy: if a customer asks to speak to a supervisor, that customer is told that a supervisor will call them back within 24 hours. In one of the recorded calls broadcast on TV, when the customer objected and demanded to speak to a supervisor immediately, he was told, “I’m sorry. There is no supervisor available.”

(buzzing sound) WRONG ANSWER!

Some pretty basic rules of management, leadership, and common sense are being violated here:
1. Customers don’t care about your policy. They want to be helped.
2. Good leaders, in well-run organizations avoid, whenever possible, putting employees in the direct line of fire of angry customers, especially with no backup. Putting employees – who had nothing to do with the boneheaded policy – on the front line, to suffer the slings and arrows of outraged customers – without reasonable support (hint: a 24-hour callback is not reasonable support) indicates a weakness in leadership. Did a group of JEA executives actually sit around a conference table and say, “Let’s not allow our reps to connect upset customers to a supervisor. That should make things better for everyone – our customers and our employees.” No. Instead they took what seemed, at the time, to be the easy way out. And now they have employees who pray their customers don’t find out where they live.
3. People – whether customers or employees – need a viable process for appealing legitimate complaints to a higher authority. Fail to provide a sympathetic ear, and, on the customer side, you get threats – occasionally rising to a criminal level. And on the employee side, you get unions. But that’s a subject for another day.