“Any person capable of angering you becomes your master.” – EPICTETUS
Emotional Intelligence and Great Customer Service
Welcome to Part Five of our Six-Part Series:
Every interaction a Fleet Manager has with a customer matters. Making time to Improve your customer service skills to effectively communicate and build your brand is essential to your success and the success of the company.
Part 5.1 EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Emotional intelligence, refers to how you manage your emotions, and your ability to read and react to other people’s emotions, empathizing with those emotions and responding appropriately.
How does this apply to customer service? The interaction your customer has with an employee can determine how they feel about the company itself.
What are some positive emotions? Happy, Grateful, and Joyful. If the customer you are interacting with seems happy and wants to chat, you should switch to a more friendly, happy tone. Show them a bit of your personality, joke with them and then give them a chance to share the same. This type of conversation will have a positive impact on the customer.
Have you heard a funny joke lately? Be sure to check out Part 4.3 of our series for a little humor.
What are some negative emotions? Frustration, Anger, and disappointment. If the customer you are interacting with seems upset, angry or frustrated, it’s critical for you to be patient and empathetic. When you express your desire and use your skills to resolve their concerns, talking calmly, and allowing them to vent their frustrations will have a positive effect.
Emotional intelligence is something that will be developed with time. A few basic elements to help you enhance your customer service skills include:
- Empathy – you understand people’s emotions.
- Social skills – you manage relationships and build networks.
- Self-awareness – you recognize and understand your moods and emotions, and how they affect others.
Part 5.2 CUSTOMER SELF-SERVICE OPTIONS
While over half of your current customers want to problem solve on their own, your company can provide top notch self-service tools like a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page on it’s website. FAQ pages include standard answers to your customers’ most commonly asked questions about your product or service, business hours, prices, and more. When you provide self-service tools your customers as well as employees will save time. Therefore, your company’s customer service will improve.
TIP: Organize questions by category and include a search bar.
Part 5.3 INVEST IN CUSTOMER SERVICE TRAINING
If you expect your staff to provide great customer service you need to take time to train them. Continue to train new and seasoned employees about valuable people skills. The benefits of great customer service include customer loyalty, customer satisfaction and more quality referrals – leading to growing the bottom line, happy customers and employees.
“Conclusion”
This concludes part five of our six part series on “How Great Customer Service Skills impac Fleet Managers”. If you enjoyed our article please share and subscribe to get email updates from this discussion as well as future articles. Please check out our blog page for real time fleet tracking, fleet fuel card, and fleet management solutions, along with other industry related articles.