Improving Emotional Intelligence in Customer Service

When I worked in customer service, emotions were my biggest problem. When I had a bad day, I wouldn't be able to contain my anger and frustration, and my biggest dream was to be able to hold back my feelings for a few hours because I felt that negative emotions were disturbing me. I wanted to check the flow of these emotions and was convinced that if I could do that, I would be able to satisfy our clients and do my job better.

But what if human emotions are something good in customer service? What if they facilitate communication between people? What if they, positive or negative, are something that makes the customer experience distinctive?

Here's why enhancing our emotional intelligence is so important in our lives:

What is emotional intelligence?

The concept of emotional intelligence was established by Peter Salovey and John Mayer as a psychological theory, and they defined it as the ability to perceive, access, and arouse emotions to help thinking, understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and reflectively regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual development.

Daniel Goleman disseminated and developed this idea by creating five components of emotional intelligence:

1. Self-awareness: The ability to recognize and understand your feelings and emotions and understand their impact on others.
2. Self-regulation: The ability to control destructive ideas, stop judging people and take time before acting.
3. Internal motivation: Engaging in a work because it is personally rewarding and beyond any external motivations, like money or social status. For example, learning, gaining experience, and having a happy family.
4. Empathy: The ability to understand the emotions of others.
5. Social skills: The ability to handle relationships and build social networks.

Daniel Goleman emphasizes the idea that if you can’t control your emotions, do not have self-awareness or empathy, or are unable to manage your upsetting emotions, you won't achieve any progress no matter how smart you are.

Emotional awareness in customer service

Emotions are a key part of our mind. They help us develop, motivate us to act, and help us avoid danger and survive. But how can we apply this in customer service?

Customer service is all about communication first and foremost. Without emotions, it can be difficult for people to achieve mutual understanding because emotions allow us to understand how the other person is feeling. So if you want to adapt your communication to the state of mind of your customers, you have to boost your emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence generally includes three skills:

1. Emotional awareness and the ability to identify your own emotions and those of others.
2. The ability to employ emotions and use them in tasks, such as thinking and problem solving.
3. The ability to handle and regulate your own emotions, and the ability to comfort or calm another person.

Primary customer experience emotions

While working in customer support, you will encounter many types of customers, but only two types of emotions - positive and negative ones.

1. Positive emotions: amazement, happiness, gratitude

Suppose you are a satisfied customer, you call customer service, hoping to have a nice conversation, but it turns out you're talking to a professional robot who has no sense of humanity. It wouldn't be a fun conversation, would it?

Once you start using your empathy, you will be able to recognize that this customer is happy and grateful and adapt your communication to their state of mind. You may smile, talk or joke with them if you feel it's the right moment, and clients will definitely appreciate this.

If you want to test a new good way to communicate with your customers, try LiveChat. This will change your customer support forever.

2. Negative emotions: anger, frustration, and disappointment

Now, let’s tackle the employee’s worst nightmare - an angry customer. Here are some examples of how to deal with these:

• If you're talking to an angry or upset customer, it’s advisable to avoid arguing with them. If they sense your anger, the conflict will mount, but when you demonstrate that you are compassionate and understanding, they are more likely to control themselves, and you will come to a fair solution.
• When you receive a complaint from a disappointed and frustrated customer, you will know that you should apologize and sympathize with them, listen and reassure them that you will find a solution to their problem as long as you are aware of it. Thanks to this, you will gain their approval.

Be proud of your emotional intelligence and frequently improve it

Emotional intelligence is the main personal growth, and it helps to understand and communicate with people effectively and to link body language, facial expressions and tone of voice with emotions. This way, we can figure out how the other person is feeling.

For customer service, this skill is essential in order to be able to talk to customers, solve their problems and provide a positive experience. Here's an example:

An 89-year-old customer was unable to drive and buy food on a snowy day, so his daughter called several stores asking for home delivery, but no one agreed, as there was a strong storm coming. She ended up calling Trader Joe's, which doesn't usually offer home delivery.

So what do you expect to happen?

If the employee who answered the phone was impassive, the customer would likely hear that Trader Joe's does not deliver any goods to homes, and they cannot make an exception because it is against their rules. In this case, the customer wouldn’t be satisfied, and there wouldn’t be an exceptional customer experience that led to spreading a story, which became Trader Joe's best public relation story.

However, given that the phone was answered by someone who could sympathize with this customer, the whole story ended happily. The Trader Joe's workers shopped for the old man, and delivered him all the orders he wanted. They also did not accept any money from him at all and left wishing him a good day.

So, next time you feel upset with your job and want to suppress your emotions, remember the old man's story.