As the spouse of a train conductor, I’ve heard my fair share of crazy stories about train incidents.

There’s the story about a mother who had instructed her children to hide behind the car when it got stuck on the tracks—because, apparently, she had the powers of Superwoman (thankfully, the train stopped in the nick of time).

Then there was the time a guy carried a machete onto the train and then proceeded to argue about what the big deal was when he was asked to get off.

And more people than you can possibly imagine jump on or off moving trains, because they either get to the station too late, or miss their stop, and simply panic—and then attempt to blame the railroad for the injuries they suffer.

All of this is to say that employees are not always in the wrong, but a company cannot expect that customers will see it that way. Employee-facing customers are particularly susceptible to encountering tense and heated situations that, if not handled appropriately, can quickly escalate into a public-relations nightmare, fueled by social media, leading to a potentially costly settlement.

With any business across all industries, integrity is a strong foundation upon which customer trust is built. When it comes to customer service, especially, sometimes all it takes is reputational word-of-mouth to make or break a company.

Of late, the airline industry has been taking the brunt of the reputational beating for poor customer-service etiquette. Its springboard was United Airlines, which has been battling an internal cultural issue since April, when a paying passenger was forcibly removed off a flight to make room for its own staff.

Since that incident, however, other airlines have had to deal with public-relations nightmares of their own. Take, for example, the airport worker who—after an argument sparked by an 11-hour flight delay—was recorded punching an EasyJet passenger who was carrying a baby in his arms. Or, consider the family shown being kicked off a JetBlue flight over a dispute involving where to store a birthday cake. And then there’s the American Airlines flight attendant who reportedly had an altercation with a mother trying to bring an oversized stroller onto a flight.

In many industries, not just transportation, the quality of customer service is the most visible way customers immediately judge a company; it’s a crucial determining factor in whether a customer remains a customer and whether it recommends business to others. Yet, customer service continues to be an often challenging and overlooked business ethics and cultural issue.

Maybe it’s time to ask some difficult ethical questions: How many of your customer-facing employees feel comfortable dealing with complaints? How do you measure that? Are customer-facing employees trained in dealing with angry or upset customers? How often, if ever? Do you use real-life case studies or role-play potential customer encounters to get employees comfortable with dealing with uncomfortable situations? Training employees to be patient, be empathetic, and to act with integrity is not an easy feat, but an educational component may be a good starting point.

With any business across all industries, integrity is a strong foundation upon which customer trust is built. When it comes to customer service, especially, sometimes all it takes is reputational word-of-mouth to make or break a company.

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