Emotional Intelligence | Stevehein

Good customer service..

under construction. i will post this because I am not sure when I will have time to finish it. But it says enough to give you the idea...

Here is an email I just sent...

hi to whoever gets this mail  

please forward it to the owner of the hostel...  

im writing to say that i was there the other day and the red haired girl who studies banking was one of the best customer service people ive met anywhere in the world. she helped me in many small ways which others would not have done. and she did it because she wanted to, not because she was trained in customer service and was just following some techniques.  

i am the guy who talked to the manager about the wifi system.  

while i didnt stay at the hostle last night since there was no wifi, i would definitely recommend the hostel at least as long as that same girl is working there.   please, if you are the owner and you get this, write me back with your own email address so i will know this gets to u. i dont normally write to someone like this but i felt motivated to this morning because she was so exceptionally helpful and easy going about everything.  

i would just ask her to help keep the place a little quieter at night because some people were making a lot of noise in the kitchen after 12 the night i was there. i finally went down myself and asked them to turn down the music, which they did, but id have prefered to not have had to get out of bed and go down. i dont like a nazi or soviet style hostel where the rules are enforced by some cold hearted person with no compassion or intelligence of any sort whether it is intellectual or emotional, but i do like to sleep at night!  

thanks  

steve hein  

Below is a page I had started the other day

Customer Service

Yesterday I met someone who gave me excellent customer service. I will call her Marisa. Marisa has never been trained in this area, so I would have to say it is a combination of her natural personality and her environment. This makes me think about something Andrew Latchford said. He said you can't really train people in emotional intelligence skills. He said it is better to just train them to refer a problem to someone who has naturally high emotional intelligence. I believe we need a combination of both approaches: provide some basic emotional skills training to customer service employees, and also train them to refer customer service problems to someone who is both more skilled and more emotionally intelligent. I also believe we can reward and encourage emotionally skillful behavior.

In the case of Marisa I believe she did what she did because it felt right to her. I also believe she operates with a lot of freedom in her job. I also suspect she is not very afraid of her boss when it comes to using her own judgment.

In this picture

Helping above and beyond the call of duty

Bending the rules

The check-out time is clearly stated as 1 PM. Yet I asked Marisa if she needed my bed or if I could take a nap after 1 since I had not slept well the night before and since my friend was coming to meet me around four or five. She said it was ok to take a nap. So I slept for a couple of hours. It was just the rest I needed. If she would have said "No, you have to be out of your room by 1", it would have literally affected my physical and mental health. Now I feel relatively rested and I won't be a half-dead guest when my friend arrives to take me to his place.

Here is a picture of the bed I took the nap in. I folded the bed cover out of appreciation for what Marisa had done, so she would not have to do it herself. I also offered her some of my dates. And I told her she was one of the best hostel receptionists I have found in the world, which was not an exageration and which also clearly surprised her.

Some people in her position would say no, even though it really would not cause a problem for me to stay in the room until four. Actually it is almost five thirty now and I am still in the room typing this. I am just sitting on a chair instead of laying in the bed. But an issue is why would they say no? Would it be out of fear that their boss would disapprove? Or would it be from a need to feel powerful? Or from some kind of long history of feeling resentful and uncooperative, due to their own past experiences?

In any case, when I think of someone like Marisa I realize that some managers will reward her for her natural instincts to help people, while others would condition her to be inflexible. Some managers would agree with everything Marisa did, and others would not. The question then is, what kind of customer service environment do you want to create in your organization? If you want someone who just follows the rules and makes everyone else follow them, then the issue of emotional intelligence doesn't really matter much. But if you want to encourage the kind of customer service which I received from Marisa, then I suggest you praise the kind of things she did and give her freedom to continue to use her judgment. I believe the results will reflect postively on your bottom line if you do.

I also believe that someone who is helpful and who shows understanding can help prevent customer dissatisfaction, lawsuits and in extreme cases, even deaths. I mention deaths because this week the case of Carol Gotbaum is in the news. I fully believe her death could have been easily prevented by some better trained customer service agents, as well as police, in the airport. The airline employees might not have been able to let her on the plane, but they could have shown her some understanding and compassion. This would have calmed her down quickly and effectively.

Andrew Latchford

Andrew Latchford is the Chief Operating Officer of Chipamunka Publishing company, which specializes in mental health publishing. He has invited me to write a book on emotional intelligent and or teen suicide and self-harm.