If you look up the term “corporate bullying” you will be misled as to what we wish to discuss in this article. You will get an answer for what is usually called “workplace bullying”. But that is not what this article is about!
According to the Workplace Bullying Institute, “workplace bullying is repeated, health-harming mistreatment by one or more employees of an employee: abusive conduct that takes the form of verbal abuse; or behaviors perceived as threatening, intimidating, or humiliating; work sabotage; or in some combination of the above”.
That definition speaks to the issue of harmful behaviour directed at employees by other employees or even by management. There are many organizations and individuals working not only on workplace bullying but on bullying in schools and other institutions. Kudos to them.
However, the kind of bullying to which we wish to treat, is bullying of customers and clients by organizations regardless to whether those organizations are private or public entities. So, what do we mean by “corporate bullying”? For the purposes of this discussion, we define corporate bullying as follows:
Corporate bullying is the use of unfair, unethical or outright illegal practices designed to pressure or harm customers (or both) and cause them to act in a manner that furthers the interest of the organization to the detriment of the customers or client.
Corporate Bullying vs. Marketing
Before we proceed, it is important that we distinguish between corporate bullying and marketing practices. There are hundreds of definitions of marketing but marketing’s primary purpose is to persuade customers to patronize and remain clients of the organization (loyalty), spend more per occasion or bring forward their spending.
These are legitimate marketing objectives for which the organization may offer the customers and clients incentives such as discounts, premiums (“free” gifts with purchase), BOGOF (Buy-One-Get-One-Free), or chances to win prizes participating in contests and games of chance.
The key to distinguishing between these marketing techniques and corporate bullying is that the customer has a choice of whether or not to engage in these promotions which is the technical term for such marketing activities.
However, behaviour on the part of an organization that is done unexpectedly; behaviour that is unfair, unprincipled or downright illegal, is what we are defining as “corporate bullying”.
Usually, but not always, corporate bullying results in customers paying fees or penalties for things which are often the fault of the organization. More often than not, it is the subtle use, or rather abuse of power that translates into corporate bullying.
From the Trenches
An example of this is commercial banks in Barbados charging clients for withdrawals at third party ATMs. This is not only unfair but stupid because it is tacit knowledge that banks want to reduce the amount of on-premise traffic. As it stands, through the aegis of CARIFS interbank linkages, banking clients can withdraw funds from the ATM of any bank. So why are customers being penalized for withdrawing funds from the ATM of any bank that happens to be nearest to or most convenient for the client?
Sticking with commercial banks for the moment; some of us might recall that not so long ago, commercial banks charged mortgage applicants a “commitment fee” of several hundred dollars. Of course, this was duly added to the mortgage principal itself, inflating the amount the hapless client had to pay back. Was this fair? Who was the party that needed be committed: the client or the bank? Needless to say, this was roundly criticized. To the best of our knowledge this practice was discontinued. If you know otherwise do let us know.
Other examples of corporate bullying are customers having to wait unnecessarily long for a response, inordinate withholding of documents from clients (e.g. mortgage deeds) or disruption of transactions with resulting embarrassment to customers because of negligence or sometimes pure spite on the part of the organization.
Government departments and agencies are particularly guilty of the first shenanigan. The frequent response is that the person dealing with the matter is on holiday or absent. Often one wonders what would be the answer had the employee passed away!
Take the case of the insurance company which refused to take the name of a divorced partner off the car insurance contract even though the client presented a valid decree absolute. The insurance company’s position was that it had to get confirmation from the divorced party first. Why did the company through its lawyer set aside a perfectly legal document regarded as valid and definitive for other purposes? What if the other party had since deceased?
Another example is the case of a client who was embarrassed more than once at the cash register because her debit card was being rejected by the payment terminal. Perish the thought that it was a case of NSF (Not Sufficient Funds).
It turns out that this particular bank had failed to properly log and flow through the client’s response to a request to update her banking details causing the software to issue a “Cannot Verify Identify” message.
What makes this qualify as corporate bullying is that the bank has not to this date issued a formal apology. The by-the-way apology of a customer service agent who had nothing to do with the original transaction could hardly be regarded as a formal apology for the embarrassment caused the customer.
It is things like these that makes one begin to wonder if we do not have to change our laws to give aggrieved persons the leeway to sue for undue and unnecessary pain and suffering from such corporate behaviour.
But corporate bullying is alive and well all over the world. In part 2 we will look into some corporate bullying which will be of more than passing interest to most people using the software of a leading computing company.
We end part 1 with a video of airline CEOs in the USA America being grilled in the US Congress. Are the issues raised cases of corporate bullying? Watch.
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