Top 3 Reasons Emotional Intelligence Helps Agents Succeed

The role of a customer service agent is undergoing an evolution; after individuals spent a year at home, they have become increasingly involved in the purchasing process. With the rise of eCommerce, customers now have access to both more products and more information — placing new responsibilities on the customer service agents to provide this comprehensive level of service well before a purchase is even processed.

This isn’t a bad thing, even though it may demand a bit more work. Frequent transfers currently represent the second leading pain point facing customers today. Therefore, reducing the number of transfers and resources required for each customer interaction undoubtedly ensures a quicker solution and works to streamline the overall customer experience. 

In this new environment, agents are also positioned as a one-stop-shop advisor or analyst — using their creativity and product knowledge to meet every customer demand. But, while it all sounds great in practice, establishing this level of competency isn’t always easy. Companies must work to provide agents with comprehensive training and modern tools to meet these new standards of care. Beyond this, companies should be looking to strengthen the focus and empathy of their team by improving and advocating for emotional intelligence skills.

Emotional intelligence is critical in preparing agents to take on a more flexible role as it represents a more active awareness and command of a person’s own emotions and behaviors, and the others around them. One of the main benefits of leveraging emotional intelligence is being able to sense and understand individuals’ moment-to-moment feelings or emotions throughout an interaction. 

In promoting more engaged awareness of others around them, companies can better prepare agents to take on these more complex interactions. Here are a few reasons why emotional intelligence will help agents succeed:

Act as an ‘Interested Observer’

Psychology Today outlined a useful tip to enhance emotional intelligence development: encouraging individuals to step into the ‘interested observer’ mode. This mindset shift allows individuals to think outside of their own involvement in an activity and observe themselves as if they were a third party watching the interaction. Then, they can work to identify moments where they may have set an inappropriate or negative tone and gauge their own emotional range. Additionally, the author encourages individuals to consider interactions in a curious and investigative manner — by doing this they can learn about their own reactions, personality, and tone and to self-regulate and improve.

This is incredibly useful as agents are expected to take on more complex interactions. By actively monitoring and curiously observing their natural reactions or behaviors, agents can work to establish a more fluid and calm tone when faced with difficult requests. They can also pinpoint moments where they were able to effectively guide customers through a more involved case to mimic these skills in future interactions.

Meet Customers Expectations

As customers become more involved in the purchasing process, they also formed new expectations and standards for success. However, as we know, customers often expect different things and the discrepancy between these needs has grown even more prominent in this new service environment.

Customers are now reaching out pre-transaction and they’re leaning on agents for everything from shipping concerns to sizing differences, which requires more attention and active listening. But, at the same time, many customers are still looking for a seamless, low-touch, and quick interaction even on the phone. Therefore, agents must be able to quickly identify the goals and tone of an interaction to effectively support every unique customer need.

By adjusting the delivery and response to match each customer’s initial introduction, agents can improve the interaction and support the customers underlying intentions. Emotional intelligence focuses on meeting others where they want to be met, reading beyond just their words to understand what they are actually looking to gain from the interaction. If a customer wants to initiate a longer discussion or share their concerns or excitement, the agent is prepared to quickly adapt their tone and responses to meet this intention.

Improve Satisfaction Levels

Becoming more aware and thoughtful during interactions will not only improve an agent’s ability to engage but will also help actively identify and correct a conversation that may be going awry. From CCW Digital’s latest Market Study, we know that companies are focusing on metrics like customer satisfaction to measure success in the contact center. So, if agents are able to pinpoint moments leading up to customer frustration or annoyance, they can work to alleviate or diffuse the situation as it occurs. 

A heightened level of emotional intelligence will allow agents to proactively improve satisfaction, rather than correct their mistakes after the fact. This level of agility and active thought will improve the overall experience and decrease the likelihood of a low satisfaction score. Additionally, as agents are more prepared to effectively take on more, customers also benefit from a more seamless and low-effort experience. 

Therefore, by emphasizing emotional intelligence skills, companies can both optimize their agent performance and improve customer satisfaction through more personalized engagement.

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