Emotional intelligence in customer service
Emotional intelligence in customer service has become a hot topic nowadays. Still, I don’t see many courses covering this topic besides stating “You should work on your emotional intelligence”. Instead of just saying "you need to have emotional intelligence", I'm going to give you some guidelines on how to develop it specifically for our context.
Hello there, everyone! My name is Ivan Chagas, the creator of the School of Polymaths, and I’ve been working with customer services in the event industry for a long time. Emotional intelligence in customer service has some peculiarities, because it involves much more than understanding your feelings and controlling them.
There’s also the need to maintain a positive attitude towards your client. You must convince them to take a course of action that will be better for both of you. And doing it often in real time and off the cuff.
I'm not going to go into too much detail about what emotional intelligence is, but since it’s important for anyone who is new or has read little about it, here it goes.
What’s emotional intelligence?
According to the website Positive Psychology, one of the most respected websites on psychology, emotional intelligence is defined as "someone’s ability to perceive, understand and manage their own feelings and emotions".
We couldn’t avoid but to mention Daniel Goleman, who popularized the term emotional intelligence. The best-selling writer, psychologist and doctor from Harvard, in a Q&A on his website specifically about emotional intelligence in customer service, he claims that since emotions are contagious, how you interact with your customers will determine how they will perceive your company. You will want the service to be positive, empathetic and to understand your customers.
In one of his books, Daniel analyzed data from the hospitality industry and found that the most effective employees had skills such as self-management, empathy and collaboration.
In a very thorough article in Harvard Business Review, Daniel Goleman reports on four domains and twelve skills a person needs to become emotionally intelligent. The domains are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. The competencies are: emotional self-awareness, emotional self-control, adaptability, achievement orientation, positive outlook, empathy, organizational awareness, influence, mentoring, conflict management, teamwork and inspirational leadership.
Finally, in his book, Daniel says successful attendants have the emotional intelligence to assess customers' emotions. They will empathize and remain emotionally present to refine their understanding of clients’ emotions with each interaction as the relationship goes on. In the end, they will assertively make suggestions according to what the customer wants.
Instead of telling how the customer should feel, a customer service agent will give the best suggestions for the customer's needs - which avoids resentments and frustrations.
Emotional intelligence in customer service in our daily lives:
Your role, as a person, is to strive to recognize what are the triggers that increase and decrease your emotional state. Then you can make better decisions about the next step.
The greatest hardship is, in fact, to remain calm, composed and to direct the customer to the desired outcome. We already had a lesson on composure during our service. Emotional intelligence comes in handy for you to maintain your sanity and to learn to improve your reactions over time.
Your role as a customer service agent in maintaining your posture is to understand that you have agency and responsibility for the situation. You’re not necessarily guilty or personally responsible for that, but you’re representing the company you work for, after all. Therefore, understand this is your role and that you have the opportunity to change the situation.
After this, you have the option of trying to change the situation or evade it, very similar to the instinct to fight or flight. Additionally, and it has already happened to me, you can ask for a time to think things through and try to find better alternatives.
When the situation was very sudden for me and I realized that the other side was clearly irritated, I simply said "Look, person X, I realize that you are not in a position to speak calmly and carrying this conversation on will not be productive. May I call you tomorrow and continue? I think that will be better for both of us, because I know you want to solve this too".
Developing emotional intelligence in customer services:
Dealing with service and people is not an easy task. Every day new situations can arise and it’s difficult to prepare for all of them, if not straight impossible. Therefore, my recommendation will never be to train for each one. But how you can create an emotional and conscious foundation to deal with 80% of the possible variety of contexts, types of clients and problems. The remaining 20% will be the cases that we will have to stop, reflect on and then come back with the answer. There’s no other way. Customer service has these shortcomings.
So, what's emotional intelligence for you and how do you develop it? I would love to read your comments on this!
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While this article has around 6 minutes of reading on average, I have a more comprehensive guide worth almost 20 minutes of content for you on my website. Head to my article in my main site to get some practical tips on how to develop your emotional intelligence!