Emotional Intelligence — or EI — is a term coined by Peter Salavoy and John Mayer in 1990. It is different from traditional intelligence as we know it and can be defined as the ability to:

• Recognize, understand and manage our own emotions.
• Recognize, understand and influence the emotions of others.

Having staff with high EI, or at least trained to be more aware of it, can skyrocket your customer retention rate and consumer satisfaction. Employees using a live support software with good empathy skills can help emotional customers in a sensitive manner when dealing with issues. It can also help to wow customers with the level of service provided, as your team can picture how they would like to be treated if the shoe were on the other foot.

Solving Problems

Customers can start a live support conversation with a wide range of emotions. They could be angry, upset, disappointed, etc. In order for support reps to provide the best level of service, it is crucial that they do not take this personally. If they are affected by it, they definitely can’t let it show in the conversation. The ability to “recognize, understand and manage our own emotions” ensures that you are monitoring how you feel about situations and how you are projecting this to others. Cool, calm and collected reps with good language can help to chill even the iratest customer, increasing the chances of them staying with your company.

The ability to “recognize, understand and influence the emotions of others” means that your staff can add a genuine level of empathy in support conversations. Your customers will feel like they are really being listened to and that you understand their needs, making them feel special.

Wowing Customers

We all know the Wow factor is important if you want repeat business, and it’s a lot easier to make customers feel special when your staff get it. EI allows staff to put themselves in the customer’s shoes and think about how they would like to be treated. We would all want the highest level of service possible, right? If your team members can see this, they can act with much more initiative and react in the moment to the customer’s individual needs, rather than following a script.

Get Emotional

We are more in touch with our emotions today than we have ever been and that is only going to continue. Being emotionally aware of yourself and others can be a very powerful tool for increasing consumer satisfaction. A high-calibre live support software such as Slaask will be chock-full of features to aid this process. A history of past conversations can help you to see previous pain points, post-chat surveys can give you an indication of performance and a consolidated message system ensures you don’t inflame heated situations further by increasing wait time.

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