Employee emotional intelligence and its effects on brand enhancement

The significance of customer satisfaction and service quality is widely influential in brand management. These two aspects are both key to customer retention and loyalty. Further, although there are essential studies discussing the tangency of service quality, employee management, and customer satisfaction, less is known about the tangency of management invention, such as empowerment on customer satisfaction and service quality from the customer’s point of view. In relation to service marketing, service employees are regularly required to express certain emotions as part of their jobs (Grayson, 1998).

Some recommendations offered as the outcome of reviews of previous solutions, aimed at getting better customer retention and at helping organizations to deal better and more easily with their staff to increase customer satisfaction could be:

1. From the recruitment point of view, human resource managers would need to be realistic about the participants’ personalities during interviews. They need to verify whether participants are able or not to fake their emotions. How successful are they in terms of deep acting and surface acting? One of the solutions to this issue is using psychological tests to estimate how emotional a person is.
2. Customer service officers would need to be trained to be able to handle their emotional conflicts and to overcome job related stress. Personnel need to understand the concept of emotional intelligence to be able to have a better idea of how to handle their emotions and prevent becoming emotionally exhausted.
3. The management team should try to lower the level of job related stress by providing stress management workshops and seminars. These workshops should be conducted on a regular basis and involve the practice of different types of relaxation techniques by personnel. Another suggestion would be to conduct meetings with their customer relations management and hold discussions about what makes them feel irritated and stressed. This will be part of the management team’s job: to be listeners for their employees.
4. Organizations need to promote work environments that encourages self-sufficiency, positive personnel communication, employee support, and opportunities for growth. The management needs to make sure that each staff member gets equal opportunities.

It needs to be mentioned that customer service personnel are paid to be friendly and display a very courteous manner. This requires an incredible effort from the employees’ side. However, it is impossible unless there is a great management system in place and various training sessions are held to make the work environment a less stressful place. Emotional intelligence must be taken extremely seriously, based on its effects on customer satisfaction and loyalty, and on financial performance and profits.

Emotional intelligence can either be positive or negative, which affects performance and brand enhancement.

By Nazanin Najipoor
Master in Marketing and Communications