Emotional Intelligence: Build Bonds Between Your Brand and the Customer

Though it does not pre-assign seats or provide onboard meals and at times has a lengthy wait and check in process, consumers year in and year out rank Southwest Airlines at the top or near the top of customer service.

Why is Southwest consistently near the top?

There are many reasons.  The most significant being alignment of customer experience to both their brand and customer expectations; however, I believe a key component of Southwest success in customer service is the emotional intelligence of their employees.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is defined by four personality characteristics:

1. A strong sense of self-empowerment and self regulation;
2. A positive outlook;
3. An awareness of feelings (both their own and customers); and
4. A master of fear and anxiety and the ability to tap into selfless motives.

Each of these characteristics provide a clear benefit to the customer experience:

Leading customer experience brands position the employee to constructively respond to challenges, make decisions in the moment, empathize with customers, and perhaps most important, not only feel but express feeling of care, concern and empathy to customers.

Much of the benefit of emotional intelligence is derived in  “moments of truth” where some experiences in the customer journey have far greater importance than others.  These moments of truth represent increased risk and opportunity to leave a lasting emotional impression on the customer; a lasting impression with significant long-term implications for both customer loyalty and wallet share.  Perhaps the most common moment of truth is when something has gone wrong, the customer is unhappy or scared, and the relationship is at risk.

How do we build emotional intelligence?

First of all, emotional bonding cannot be scripted.  Attempting to script such a connection will inevitably come off as hollow and insincere lacking authenticity and empathy, completely undermining the desired customer experience.  Rather, emotional bonding must be a result of a spontaneous series of events that emerge from the emotional intelligence of employees.

The obvious starting point in building emotional intelligence is hiring frontline employees with the requisite emotional intelligence skills.   Emotional intelligence can also be learned.  However, it is a “soft” skill, unlike “hard” skills such as math; it can’t be taught in structured sessions. Rather, emotional intelligence is learned like almost all other human behaviors primarily though observation, experience and imitation.

Four Steps to Build Emotional Intelligence

Give people meaning in their work:  Inspire frontline employees with a purpose beyond a paycheck.  This clarity of purpose should include both what they are supposed to do and why they are supposed to do it.

In empowering frontline employees to serve customers, brands should arm them with statements of general principles and values rather than scripted procedures, which undermine empowerment.  Reinforce these principals often so in the instant, when they are in a moment of truth with a customer in need, they have an appropriate framework from which to resolve the issue – and bond the customer to the brand.

Most frontline employees want to help customers; however, their motivations may be varied.  Leading customer experience brands allow their employees to discover their own motivations for looking out for the customer’s best interests.

Create learning opportunities through experience:  Humans are programmed to learn through self-discovery.  Self-discovery reinforces the learning process by instilling a sense of accomplishment or pride.  These positive feelings associated with self-discovery are a strong psychological reward, which reinforces the learning process.  While self-discovery is not a top-down process, managers can foster self-discovery through feedback, encouraging employees to reflect on their own successes and failures, and anecdotes about other employees.  Case studies are not just for MBA students.

Align customer experience systems and processes:  It is imperative that systems and processes support the emotional skills desired from employees.  Systems and process must constantly reinforce the overall message of emotional intelligence and emotionally connecting with customers.   In empowering employees to respond to moments of truth, management must strike a balance between financial considerations and the things that matter to the customer.  Good customer experiences are not good because they are good; they are good because they are profitable; however, there is no benefit to being penny wise and pound foolish.  Finally, processes need to be streamlined to give employees both the time and ability to rise to the situation.

Enlist leaders and mentors:  Emotions are learned through modeling.  Children don’t learn to react to certain stimuli just because a parent tells them what to feel.  We learn how to react to certain situations through trial and error and observing role models.  First, it is imperative that all managers and leadership model appropriate emotional skills.  How can you expect emotional intelligence from the frontline if it doesn’t exist in leadership?  Second, identify employees with the appropriate emotional skills and position them as role models within the organization.

Key to success of any customer facing brand is alignment of the customer experience to both the brand promise and customer expectations.  Most of time, this is not difficult. Appropriate systems procedures and even automated delivery channels can achieve this end.   However, in moments of truth, where there is a high degree of risk associated with the outcome of the experience, leading customer experience brands rely on an emotionally intelligent frontline staff to align the experience and bond the customer to the brand.