'I felt ashamed': Embarrassing customers are bad for business

I’ve never been a people watcher, except when people make fools of themselves in public.

All of a sudden I become a transfixed witness to an open scene of social humiliation, which of course reflects poorly on me.

Thankfully, according to a new study, my schadenfreudish perversity is uncommon. Much more common is a sense of embarrassment at seeing other people being embarrassing.

Especially when that other person is a fellow customer. I’ve written before about the characteristics of terrible customers, and that customers need to stop being intolerable. But in research publishedin last month’s Psychology & Marketing journal, specific behaviours and experiences were brought to light.

Many of these were associated with the violation of proper manners and service standards. Prominent examples include drunkenness, cutting in line, and glaring attempts to cheat the customer service representative. Other examples shared by the interviewees include matters of personal hygiene such as people who go to the gym without showering afterwards, or the breaching of store rules such as taking more garments into a change room than the maximum allowed. Read more