Guidance

Coal Authority unacceptable behaviour policy

Published 22 September 2023

1. Unacceptable behaviour policy

We are committed to providing a professional and fair service to everyone. We treat all customers with courtesy and respect and expect our staff to be treated in the same way.

2. Purpose of this policy

This policy explains how we manage unacceptable customer behaviour consistently, fairly and reasonably.

It sets out clearly what we consider to be unacceptable and the steps we may take to deal with such behaviour.

It applies to everyone who accesses our services.

3. Definition of unacceptable behaviour

Unacceptable behaviour means acting in a way that is unreasonable, regardless of the level of someone’s stress, frustration or anger. It may involve acts, words, or physical gestures that could cause another person distress or discomfort.

4. Unreasonable behaviour

Unreasonable behaviour includes:

• use of threats, verbal abuse, racist, sexist or homophobic language, derogatory remarks, other offensive terms or unsubstantiated allegations
• refusing to accept our procedures by demanding to only communicate with certain members of staff
• contacting different members of staff or making repeated requests with the motive of receiving a different response to what has been stated

5. How we will respond to incidents of unacceptable behaviour

We do not expect our employees to tolerate unacceptable behaviour when communicating with our customers.

When this happens, our employees have the right to:

• place callers on hold
• end the call
• leave site immediately
• not reply to an abusive email, letter, or social media contact

Before taking action we will warn customers that they are behaving in an unacceptable way to give them the chance to change their behaviour.

We will take the following steps:

• ask customers to modify their behaviour and explain why
• if the behaviour continues to be unacceptable, our employees will remove themselves from the situation - if the communication is by telephone, the caller will be told that the call will be ended
• the employee will inform their manager who will keep a record of the incident and in all cases a manager will investigate the situation and decide what action to take - this could include taking steps to limit a customer’s future contact with us
• we will refer the matter to the police where a criminal offence has been threatened or committed

6. Managing communications

If a customer continues to behave unacceptably, we may put in place a communications restriction.

We would tell the customer this and explain the reasons why.

This could include one or more of the following:

• not responding to correspondence that is abusive in tone
• requesting that all future contact is through a third party
• managing contact with the customer where only one employee (an appointed contact) will deal with calls or correspondence from the person in future
• declining future telephone calls - providing an alternative contact channel
• placing time limits on telephone conversations and personal contact
• blocking or redirecting the customer’s telephone number or email address

Following persistent correspondence or where our complaint procedures have been exhausted we will be clear that we will not reply further in future unless genuinely new issues are raised.

7. Review

We will review any decision to restrict communications on at least an annual basis and if the circumstances have changed we may lift some or all restrictions.