The employer in this case was a small family company with around eight employees, it had a staff handbook which contained examples of gross misconduct. Amongst these examples was “incompetence or failure to apply sound professional judgement”.
In this tribunal case, the employee was dismissed by her employer when she called a customer a t**t in an email and mistakenly sent it to the customer instead of a colleague. The customer had been repeatedly complaining about the curtains he had ordered and wanted a refund on his purchase. However, instead of clicking “forward” she used the “reply” button on her email in error, so the customer received the email rather than her colleague. The employee apologised profusely to the customer’s wife who had called about the incident, but the customer’s wife asked to speak to a manager to request that she get the curtains she had ordered from the business for free due to the incident. The business offered to give the customer £500 as “a gesture of goodwill”. After threatening to publicise the incident in the press and on social media, she was told the matter would be investigated. The threat prompted the employee’s manager to “get rid of” the employee.
Consequently, the employee was dismissed following a disciplinary hearing. However, no interviews were held with either the employee or the customer, no notes were made by the manager of the disciplinary hearing and there was no letter of the dismissal decision sent to the employee. A letter outlining the dismissal decision was sent to the customer’s wife. The employer refused the employee’s request for an appeal on the basis that, in the employer’s view, there were no solid grounds for appealing.
The employment tribunal acknowledged that the employee was wrong to send the email to the customer but the tribunal found her dismissal to be unfair.
The tribunal found that, on the facts, the reason for the dismissal was that the customer had threatened to publicise the incident and to leave a poor review on Trustpilot.
The employment tribunal found that had a fair procedure been followed, there was no chance that the employee would have been dismissed. The judge found that the disciplinary process and the dismissal were a sham designed to placate the customer.
The employee was awarded £5,485 compensation for unfair dismissal. In this case (unfortunately for the employer), the outcome of the incident was ultimately a more expensive, time consuming and poorer reputational outcome for the employer in the long run due to the way this incident was handled.
Dealing with customers can often be a very tricky balancing act between offering good service and protecting the business, particularly where the customer behaves unreasonably and adopts the “customer is always right” stance and/or threatens the business with bad online reviews. This case is a useful reminder that in the rush to appease disgruntled customers, the employer may not always get the balance right. Employers still have a duty of care to their employees and must comply with employment law.
In order to reduce the risk of unfair dismissal claims (and other potential negative consequences) employers must still follow a fair dismissal process and conduct a reasonable disciplinary investigation regardless of their size and resources, or the gravity of the misconduct. FSB members are reminded that they should take legal advice via the FSB Legal Advice line prior to dismissing an employee.