Today, customers do not buy products and services only. They buy experiences. According to recent studies, businesses collectively lose billions in revenue per year due to one unfortunate reason: poor customer service, leading to poor customer experience. The revenue figure quoted above has increased by almost 50 percent from just two years back which is pointing to a problem that is only getting worse as time goes on. These days, when customer experience is the veritable Fourth Industrial Revolution it isn’t enough to simply respond quickly to customer inquiries and offer guidance whenever possible. For delivering a memorable customer experience, we need to create a true, emotional connection with people and use customer service as a way to hone and strengthen it. In this continuum, our own customer centricity and ownership plays a major role.

For delivering a unique customer experience, emotional intelligence in terms of customer service comes into play – something that can not only improve our efforts, but also create a new competitive advantage for us in a wide range of ways that are worth exploring.

Why EI matters in customer service

We need to start thinking of customer service as more than just a utility-based interaction. When we think about service just as a client question to be answered, we lose out on multiple potential opportunities.  When we don’t, we are able to leverage those very opportunities. When customers make direct contact with our brand, they do it for a reason. It is this reason which offers us opportunities that we need to use to our advantage; through emotional intelligence.

Let’s look at 4 simple ways in which we can use emotional intelligence to deliver a unique customer experience

Empathy: empathy is the ability and the mindset to get into the customer’s shoes. It is the hall mark of understanding our customers. In many ways, success in this regard begins and ends with our ability and attitude to care about the person we are speaking to and the issue they are having. “Compassion” is a trait that should be a crucial requirement for anyone in the organization who has the potential to make contact with a customer, regardless of whether they’re technically in customer service or not. Furthermore, we incessantly need to look for reasons to care about our customers.

Building trust : In business, customers mean everything. They are the most important revenue drivers and our brand image builders. Ergo, what our customers think about us can affect practically everything. It is owing to this, that building customer trust makes all the difference. It is noteworthy that while relationships between businesses and customers are quite different from interpersonal connections, most of the core foundations are actually quite similar. Trust and respect are cornerstones of customer decision-making and using emotional intelligence to build trust , especially in an age when customers care more than ever about transparency and socially conscious practices is a critical success factor.

Listening: A strongway to leverage emotional intelligence to our advantage in terms of customer service to deliver a memorable customer experience, involves both truly and deeply listening to what our customer is experiencing and our ability to maintain a positive conduct and attitude, throughout. To be emotionally more intelligent while listening, we need to throw out “the script“, the “broken record” and treat every interaction as unique as it actually is. We need to listen empathically and search for the bigger picture – to find out what the customer’s said and unsaid needs are and what we need to do to exceed customer’s expectations by focusing on the solutions.

The key to using emotional intelligence in customer service involves raising our own self- awareness. Hence, we cannot be afraid to check in on how we are feeling. Only when are able to read and label our own emotions, we will be able to read the emotions of our customers. Building our emotional intelligence skills enables us to leverage our emotional intelligence to do more than just answer customer questions or solve customer problems efficiently. We attain a position whereby we can create better outcomes across the board, taking a standard or even negative customer experience and turning it into a positive one. Consequently, this strengthens the emotional connection we have with our customers, thus increasing their brand loyalty.

This blog has been written by Namita Singh, Consultant & Project Manager at GrowthSqapes.