How should you deal with an employee who steps out of line?

Should you panic? Get defensive? Become combative? Fire him or her? Ignore it? Blame the customer?

No. This is how you deal with it.

A consumer contacted us with a complaint and later, on Facebook, reported that she:

"got a call from the Sales Consultant and he firstly told me how unhappy he is about the way I handled the complaint, his friends n everyone is taking about the post. Please need advice here was I wrong to post that."

Needless to say the Facebook crowd were clear about how they felt:

"He's focusing on the wrong thing. Too worried about what his friends and colleagues think, instead of how he made the customer feel. He's totally out of line. If he were my employee I'd give him a warning or fire him. There's no saving this guy."

"I don't think you were wrong, you did right, you might have saved a lot of customers from going through the same experience, if this guy takes their business seriously, they'l pull up their socks to avoid more posts on CW"

"so what?, if they r talkin thats a positive feedback.he s not the right person to handle customer complaints"

"No customer is ever at fault to complain it is your right and it is the only way how owners and serious managers can improve!!!"

And my favourite comment:

"tell him to go stuff his feelings, he should understand that you felt bad and humiliated at the time you were subjected to poor service"

However it all got a lot better then we reported the issue to a senior manager at the company. Within moments she was in touch saying:

"On behalf of management we are appalled by this behaviour, this is not our conduct and we will deal with the matter. Kindly inform the client that she was certainly not at fault and this issue will be resolved."

Sensible, mature and righteously indignant at the behaviour of their employee. THAT is how you do it.