Connect Emotionally with Customers!

Mathew and Sandy are team members in a SaaS company. Mathew has less technical skills than Sandy. Sandy knows more about software and technical queries. He is the one who builds solutions for the clients and manages the product. Even Mathew reaches out to Sandy for any help in getting reports or understanding the backend processes. But at the time of annual review, Mathew got higher increment than Sandy. This was because Mathew has very good relations with his team members. The manager trusts Mathew when it comes to handling an important task, he is more accountable and has effective communication skills. He participates in contract negotiations because of his human engineering ability. Mathew’s personality is loved by everyone. He holds the capacity to give constructive feedback to the team members. Everyone comes to him for honest advice and feedback. The management recognized his ability to lead and made him the new team leader. We all must be familiar with such situation at our workplace.

Technical ability plays less role than the skills of human engineering, ability to effectively communicate, negotiate and lead. All these qualities are the result of emotional intelligence. Emotional Intelligence is responsible for more than 50 percent of our job performance.

Person with high emotional Intelligence remains in positive state of mind, has strong communication skills, empathize with others, refrains from conflicts and remains stress free. All these capabilities help them to stay calm in all circumstances and make right decisions.

Q. What is Emotional Intelligence?

As per an article from Haward Business School “Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to understand and manage your own emotions, as well as recognize and influence the emotions of those around you.”

https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/emotional-intelligence-in-leadership

Emotional Intelligence in simple words means to recognize the emotions in yourself and others as they are occurring (real time) and use that understanding of emotions to improve relationships and achieve the desired outcome.

Q. Why is Emotional Intelligence important for business?

??Understanding and managing the emotions of others is the foundation of building emotional connection with them. An emotional connection?develops loyalty and influences the purchase decision and develops stronger human connect with a customer.

??Most of us would like to?buy from a person we like and trust?than someone we don't like and trust. Even if the person we don't trust is offering a better product at a lower price, we would not buy from them.

??Those with high EQ are better equipped to understand their clients' needs and are able to build stronger relationships with them. Building trust and becoming the trusted advisors for the customer, take your business to new heights.

??Active Listening Skills are the part of character for the emotionally intelligent employees. They listen to their customers for clarity and wait for them to finish. They listen to understand and not to respond.

??By better listening, understanding and responding to emotionally charged situations, as required, you can transform customer experiences to their “Wow moments”. Happy and satisfied customers like to do business with you and are ready to ignore small hiccups.

Q. Can emotional intelligence be learnt or developed?

The good news is that Emotional Intelligence can be developed with time. Although it is not easy but at the same time it is possible. It is difficult because most of us consider our reactions and actions as correct. We are not aware of the perspective of others around us about our behaviour.

We can take below steps to develop our Emotional Intelligence.

1. Acknowledge and realize your own emotions. Understanding one's emotions helps to take control and prevent situations of conflict.
2. Learn to manage your stress, time, memory and decision making
3. Keep yourself motivated by setting goals and achieving them
4. Reward yourself for your achievements and celebrate your wins
5. Do not make assumptions and keep the communication clear
6. Focus on interests and needs of others
7. Always ask for feedback and take it positively
8. Own your mistakes and make corrections
9. Be curious and ask all types of questions
10. Disagree but without debating
11. Never ignore your inner voice
12. Be agile and ready to adapt to a changing situation

?Q. What role does Emotional Intelligence play in Customer Success?

The customer success components which get impacted due to the Emotional Intelligence of the CSM:

?Customer Purchase decision

?Customer engagement

?Customer satisfaction

?Customer loyalty

?Customer happiness

?Customer renewal

?Customer time to value

?Customer Referrals

?Customer brand advocacy

Q. How to use emotional intelligence to improve customer Experience?

Customers want to feel valued and respected. We can make them feel so by using Emotional Intelligence- by asking relevant questions, listening to them, acknowledging their concerns. This gives the customer a feeling of satisfaction and they are ready to ignore minor delays and failures because they feel a genuine connection.

Customer experience can be improved by becoming emotionally Intelligent:

???Start the conversation by asking about the well being of the customer. This is a human act and everyone feels connected with this

???Listen to the customer and be receptive instead of being defensive

???Keep customer informed about the stage of their request on regular intervals

???Pay attention to the customer tone and work to shorten the time to resolve

???Educate the customers and help them become capable to resolve the similar issue in future

???Provide emotional support if the customer is upset or confused. Just offer to listen

???Be professional and positive in all customer interactions. Stay calm and composed even if the customer is hyper and upset

Q. What are the 4 emotional intelligence skills for success?

• Self-awareness – It is important to understand your own feelings, thoughts and emotions. This makes you able to control and manage your emotions. Knowing yourself and how you are impacting others, help to build strong relations and build trust. Having self-awareness?makes you better decision makers, gives more self-confidence and then you can control the outcome. Your action is free from any bias or assumption and you can communicate with clarity.
• ?Self-management – Self management means you're able to control and regulate your emotions, impulsive feelings and behaviors. Managing your?emotions?in healthy way is a strong human character. While in stressful circumstances, you need to show thoughtfulness and self discipline. When you are feeling frustrated and angry, it is not the right time to take any decisions. Some important factors contributing to self management are- taking initiative, fulfilling your commitments and adapting to changing situations.
• Social Awareness - You need to learn to pay attention to the feelings of people around you. Socially aware people consider the opinions and perspective of people from different backgrounds and cultures. Paying attention to the tone of voice, facial expressions and body language of others help you to change the further pace and direction of discussion. Socially aware people recognize and appreciate the strengths of others.
• ?Relationship management - ?Your Interpersonal skills and your ability to encourage and get the best potential of others shine helps in building strong relationships with the colleagues and the customers. These skills are important while resolving the issues and challenges between the team members. Good relationship management skills help to build strong relations between colleagues, influence the decisions and negotiate the possibilities. This builds your leadership ability. You work towards providing personalized experience to the customer and build strong relationships that result in loyalty and extended contracts.

Q. What are the ways to make Emotional Connections with potential customers?

????Share brand stories and testimonials on social media

????Be authentic and honest

????Talk to the customers regularly

????Show the eagerness to help them

????Take the feedback seriously and act upon it

????Be ready to change and adapt

????Always respond to the customer

????Make the after sale experience nice for them

????Open various channels of communication

????Use emotions for marketing campaigns

????Appreciate and show gratitude for the customer

????Deliver as promised and before deadline

Q. What is the Link Between Emotional Intelligence & Problem Solving?

Problem solving is an integral part of the daily life of all working professionals. Your emotions have a strong impact on your problem solving and decision making skills. When you are angry, you will take rash and quick decisions. When you are excited you tend to take impulsive decisions without thinking about the long term impact.

Emotional Intelligence gives us the ability to analyze the scenario and the information effectively and use these to make a logical judgement. Authentic and empathetic decisions are taken by an emotionally Intelligent individual. It gives us the power to recognize and manage our emotions while solving a problem. This way we are able to reduce the negative outcomes of our decisions.

?Q. How does emotional intelligence improve performance?

Your Emotional Intelligence impacts almost everything you do and speak everyday. Emotionally Intelligent people are able to control and govern their actions, their behavior and the end result. Such people have the below major traits:

??They feel proud of the work and organization

??They are grateful towards the job and the supportive manager

??They feel satisfaction in completing the assigned task

??They take better decisions for themselves and the company

??They form and maintain good relations

??They are able to manage the stress effectively

??They handle constant change and adapt to the situation

??They strongly believe in their potential

??They show genuine concern and empathy

??They are confident and self reliant

?Q. How to measure Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional Intelligence is not easy to be measured but at the same time, it is possible to measure your Emotional Intelligence. There are various approaches followed to measure Emotional Intelligence. The most favoured approach is by answering the online test and getting scored for the answers.

?These online emotional intelligence questionnaires can be of different types:

1.???Answer a series of questions and get the result

2.???3Answer questions about your emotions and feelings and get the score

3.???Get the questionnaire about yourself filled by someone else, who knows you well

4.???You are given different scenarios and you need answer them using your emotional intelligence

?Q. Who can benefit from emotional intelligence?

The individual employees and the organization- both benefit from Emotional Intelligence. This is a soft skill which encourages personal growth. You are able to manage your own emotions, avoid stress and optimize your work performance. Ability to manage your feelings, keeps you motivated. An emotionally Intelligent employee is an asset for the organization. They have great leadership ability which results in efficient team performance. Their decision making is strong and thoughtful, which takes the organization on the path of success. Increased productivity of employees result in increase in market share and lower attrition rate for the organization. Improved client service and cost saving result in increase in revenue. The final benefit for the organization is high employee satisfaction.

Let us conclude with a determination that you will start to work towards enhancing your Emotional Intelligence from today!

#emotionalintelligence #customersuccess #businesssuccess