Emotional intelligence, otherwise known as EQ, is the ability to identify and appropriately respond to one’s own emotions and the emotions of others.
As a trusted adviser to senior executives and their teams, emotional intelligence is at the core of everything I do. I counsel professionals on how to identify not only their own, but their colleague’s personal drivers and de-motivators and empower them with a heightened awareness which enables them to work more effectively together.
You see, we’re all different, no two people are the same! And it’s this holistic understanding of how we each differ that is the key to having good emotional intelligence.
I was invited to attend the inaugural CX Thought Leadership Forum hosted by Tanna Partners last night. It was such a great opportunity to meet like-minded senior professionals and engage in thought provoking discussions around how we can further enhance the experience for our customers. One of the key themes was around emotional intelligence, and being in the field that I am, I was asked to share some insights into how EQ can impact the customer’s experience and I thought I’d share them with you below:
Top tip: treat your employees like your best customer!
Some businesses are so focused on making their investors happy, their customer’s satisfaction comes second. But, when it comes to giving employees what they want, it’s simply an afterthought and sometimes gets completely forgotten. However, those companies don’t realise what a massive mistake they’re making.
Putting an emphasis on keeping employees happy and satisfied is important because the customer experience ultimately starts with them. When employees trust and respect their manager and the company's leadership team, they’ll be more productive, they’ll be keen to learn more and they’ll remain in the company for longer. If you get ‘buy in’ from your employees, they’ll then be advocates for your services/product, referring friends and family, who will then refer their friends and family and so on and so forth. This simple, yet powerful philosophy can work in any company, and it’s been proven to lead to higher sales, greater revenues, and generally more profitability.
Empowering employees with this trust and respect is what separates exemplary customer service from the rest. The domino effect is truly outstanding.
Emotions are contagious
As we know, emotions are contagious, so it’s not rocket science to deduct that the way employees interact with customers reflects on how the customer perceives the company.
Employees who have high emotional intelligence are enthusiastic, empathetic and engaged. They’re better communicators, better listeners and generally more aware of their surroundings.
Emotional intelligent employees are able to use their empathy to relate to customers and assess their emotions, which then allows them to be assertive in making suggestions that are in line with what the customer truly wants.
They encourage motivation and engagement with the customer because that’s the energy they’re giving out. Engaged customers are the ones that stick around for a long time, they’re the ones that bring in new business with their enthusiastic recommendations and positive experiences. And guess what, customer engagement has also been shown to increases profit margin, share price, and ROI!
Makeup manufacturer, L’Oreal, held a study around this very topic, and found sales agents who were hired for their high EQ, each sold $91,000 annually more than salespeople selected through the traditional hiring process. What’s more, the emotionally intelligent salespeople had a 63% lower turnover rate during the first year of employment.
British telecommunications company, BT, also wanted to make a change because their customers were growing increasingly dissatisfied, maybe because it had emerged that their customer service advisers were only spending a fifth of their time speaking with customers, and the rest of the time doing admin. So they held a study of around 900 people and first off determined whether they had the EQ skills required to successfully manage long-term relationships with customers. Out of that set, 400 were chosen to work in customer facing roles, 400 joined the customer fulfilment team, 91 were relocated and 9 didn't make the cut. The results speak for themselves, with customer interaction increasing by 200% with a 40% improvement in service delivery. The quality of the way they handled the customer transaction also increased and operational costs reduced 17%, amounting to around £6 million by consolidating all processing activities. The most astounding result of all though, was that customer satisfaction rose by 36%.
Emotional attachment to a brand
Most companies monitor price and product innovation as rational market drivers. However, the times have changed. Today’s customers aren’t making decisions based on these traditional factors alone - they’re increasingly influenced by their emotional experiences with a brand and relate it back to their own personal drivers.
So if you’re finding you don’t have the best customer satisfaction scores, stop and look at the satisfaction of your employees first. Start by treating them as the customer and invest in enhancing their EQ skills. It’s plain to see that if you encourage your teams to practice emotional intelligence, you’ll find that not only will they be better at customer service and thus enhance the customer experience, but they’ll work more seamlessly as team members. They’ll be working better together!
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