Can you deal with the human stuff? 

Prefer to listen?

Your customer service performance is based on how well you’re dealing with the human stuff. 

I’ve been on the road a bit the past few weeks and have had the opportunity to observe many humans serving humans. I have been greeted warmly, ignored completely, spoken to with care and pointed at like I was a number. These contrasting experiences have led me to various conclusions about the brands and businesses I’ve shopped at, my conclusion often based on how one staff member served me on one occasion. Like it or not, how a customer feels about an individual service exchange is usually how that customer feels about the brand itself. 

I reckon a big contributor to inconsistencies from customer service staff is because staff have varied abilities in managing their own emotions. 

Staff are humans too, after all. Maybe they’re having a bad day. Maybe they’re tired and stressed out. Maybe they feel disconnected from their workplace. Whatever is going on for them, if they’re not able to manage their emotions internally, these will leak out into how they serve customers. What we want in service interactions is for staff to put in the emotional labour to serve their best, no matter what they’re feeling personally. 

It was Dale Carnegie who suggested, in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People, that we need to remember, when we are dealing with humans, that we’re not dealing with creatures of logic but with creatures of emotions. The best teams and businesses who get customer service right are typically highly skilled in the emotional and social intelligence of dealing with humans, not just in providing logic and solutions. 

The better your teams and employees can manage their own emotions, the better they’ll be able to work with the emotions of your customers. 

Question 

How well are your people managing their own emotions when serving others and what evidence do you have of this?