Managing unreasonable customer behaviour policy

We define unreasonable customer behaviour as:

“Those who, because of the nature or frequency of their contacts with the Council, negatively impact our ability to deal effectively with their, or other people’s complaints or requests”

Unreasonable behaviour may include one or more isolated incidents, as well as ‘unreasonably persistent behaviour’, which is usually a build-up of incidents or behaviour over a longer period.

The following are some examples of what we consider to be unreasonable customer behaviour:

• Refusing to specify the complaint or service request, despite offers of assistance with this from the Council’s staff;
• Making an unreasonable number of contacts with us, by any means, in relation to a specific service request, complaint or complaints;
• Refusing to accept that issues are not within the remit of a complaints procedure or a service request despite having been provided with information about the procedure’s scope;
• Covertly recording meetings and conversations without the prior knowledge and consent of the other persons involved;
• Making unnecessarily excessive demands on the time and resources of staff whilst a complaint is being looked into by, for example, excessive telephoning or sending emails to numerous council staff, writing lengthy, complex letters every few days and expecting immediate responses;
• Submitting falsified documents from themselves or others;
• Submitting repeat complaints/service requests, after service delivery and/or complaints processes have been completed, essentially about the same issues, with additions/variations which the complainant insists make these “new” service requests/complaints which should be put through the relevant procedure;
• Adopting a “scattergun” approach - pursuing parallel service requests/complaints on the same issues with a variety of other organisations or with a number of officers within the Council;
• The service request or complaint is unreasonable or disproportionate in the amount of time expended and those matters of complaint are considered to be unreasonable as to impose a significant burden in terms of time and cost to be expended by the Council, if such matters were pursued;
• Refusing to accept the decision and repeatedly arguing points with no new evidence;
• Having insufficient or no grounds for their complaint and making the complaint vexatiously to inconvenience the Council;
• Refusing to co-operate with the complaints investigation process whilst still wishing their complaint to be resolved;
• Insisting on the complaint being dealt with in ways which are incompatible with the complaints procedure or good practice (e.g. insisting that there is no written record made of the complaint);
• Making unjustified complaints about the staff dealing with the complaints, and seeking to have them dismissed or replaced;
• Changing the basis of the complaint as the investigation proceeds and/or denying statements made at an earlier stage;
• Introducing new information not related or substantive to the original complaint but which the complainant expects to be taken into account and commented on, or raising large numbers of detailed but unimportant questions and insisting they are fully answered;
• Where the complainant has persistently changed the substance of a complaint or raises identical or similar issues or otherwise seeks to prolong unreasonably the matters of complaint through further concerns or questions whilst the original complaint is being addressed;
• A persistence in pursuing a complaint where the local assessment and determination process has been fully and properly implemented and exhausted;
• Refusing to accept a complaints decision – repeatedly arguing the point and complaining about the decision;
• The matter of complaint can fairly be characterised as being obsessive or manifestly unreasonable through, for example, repetitive allegations;
• The matter of complaint is politically motivated and where press and other publicity has been attracted to the matter of complaint before the same have been reported to the Council’s Monitoring Officer and which the Monitoring Officer in unison with the Independent Persons reasonably believes is not in the public interest to warrant an investigation. It will also be a consideration as to whether independent evidence is likely to be obtained and the nature of seriousness of complaint which may not warrant any further action being taken;
• Combinations of some or all of these.

The above list is not exhaustive and merely explanatory of examples of unreasonable customer behaviour.