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The Emotionally Intelligent Customer
The emotionally intelligent customer does not like to be lied to. He does not like to be tricked. fooled, decieved, manipulated. He does not like exaggerations, false promises, false hope. He does not like to have his intelligence insulted. She does not like to be treated like everyone else. She does not like to be labeled or stereotyped. She does not want to be "sold." She does not want to feel pressured. She wants to make up her own mind.
The emotionally intelligent customer sees through emotional falseness and insincerity. He feels easily offended by lip service. .
An emotionally intelligent customer does not like to hear about company policies and procedures. He or she wants a human response. They want to know that the person they are speaking with has feelings and that they feel some empathy or compassion for their situation.
The emotionally intelligent customer can quickly sense defensiveness in others tone of voice, choice of words and body language.
A company which is defensive is not open to customer feedback. They are not open to learning. They are not appreciative of feedback, whether positve or negative. A company representative who feels defensive is insecure. He or she is either personally insecure and doesn't like to be questioned, challenged or criticized, or they are afraid of getting in trouble by their bosses.
You certainly don't want your customers to feel insulted, so keep these things in mind if you consider your customers to be emotionally intelligent.
later...
http://www.yanq.org.au/sector/news/810-dont-just-say-sorry-a-statement-from-the-national-sorry-day-committee
Show dale carnegie story - imagined complaints...
Even if you listen, but do nothing, the emotionally intelligent customer may feel offended. Emotionally intelligent customers are likely to be INFP's on the Myers Briggs scale.
You need to understand their motive and motivation... In the case of KFC the woman seemed to truly be concerned about the younger workers. Simply listening to her, or even offering her money probably would not have satisfied her. She might have even felt offended, as xx seems to feel offended by the possibility that the Kevin Rudd administration was just trying to placate the Aboriginals by talking to them but not actually doing anything. As she says "Don't just say sorry."
Today I searched for "Emotionally Intelligent Customer," in quotes. To my surprise, I found 3,320 results. I quickly saw that most of the results were talking about emotionally intelligent customer service. So I tried this search:
"Emotionally Intelligent Customer" -"intelligent customer service"
When I took away the words "intelligent customer service," I found just 5 results.
The first one was an article about NLP and call centers. In reading the article I found this quote that I liked:
... if a customer is genuinely upset, the agent can empathize and show they understand without actually saying "I understand". That phrase is one I hate. I think it is used largely by emotionally unintelligent people who do not know the first thing about building rapport. You show rapport, you don't say it or do it with a script. Source
This reminds me of someone who recently told me, "I understand, but I disagree." My partner and I have joked about that several times since then. Whenever she would say something, I would say, "I understand, but I disagree."