Emotionally Intelligent Customer Service

Okay, so today didn’t start off very well. 

Your alarm didn’t go off so you missed breakfast at home.  Your boss gave you a dirty look when you reached the office because some clown in an SUV broke down in the fast lane on Jalan Tun Razak and made you twenty minutes late.  A colleague bumped your arm as you carried your coffee from the pantry and your white blouse is stained for the day.  And now, at 11:30, just as your morning settles down, in walks the customer from Hell.  (sigh)

Among the many customers you serve, the difficult types are very few.  Yet these are the ones that trigger your emotions and lead you into potential confrontations.  This is why developing emotional intelligence is critical for customer service people. 

And just who are customer service people?  Anyone who comes into contact with customers.  So this probably means you.

Developing your emotional intelligence happens on two levels – recognizing and managing your own emotions and recognizing and managing the emotions of others.

Managing your own emotions is simply a matter of breaking patterned behavior.  We all have emotional buttons that are easily pushed, and when they are, they trigger the same emotional response.  Think about your emotional response when that customer walks into your office.  It’s familiar.  You’ve felt it before.

Managing this response is simply a matter of breaking the pattern.  Once you know your triggers and identify the accompanying response, your next step is to find a disruptor.  This could be an image in your mind, a key word, the punch line to a joke or intimate thoughts of a friend.  The idea, however, is that your patterned emotional response is interrupted, and this prepares you to move in a different emotional direction.

As soon as you find yourself face to face with a difficult customer, think rationally for just a moment.  First, recognize that something that this customer is doing or saying is irritating you.  This is your trigger.  Second, recognize and acknowledge the emotion that accompanies this trigger.  It could be anger, irritation, frustration or helplessness.  Whatever it is, embrace it and feel it.  But, before you respond to it, call up your disruptor.  Think of your joke.  Concentrate on your key word.  Imagine your lover’s smiling face, or whatever about your lover. 

Then, once the emotional behavioral pattern is interrupted, face your difficult customer and begin managing his or her emotions.

How is this done?  Next week I’ll tell you a story, and you’ll see.

Don’t be angry!