Can you teach a new dog old tricks?
Sadly not everyone oozes charisma and social flair, so for want of warmer and more “emotionally intelligent” staff, what’s an operator to do to get those apathetic attitudes and aptitudes up to scratch and make his/her staff stand out from the crowd? Can you teach personality?
You walk into a beautiful 5 star hotel, the chandelier in the lobby is the biggest and brightest you have ever seen and as for the marble walls, well they’re unbelievable. You get to the front desk and there stands the receptionist. His customer service is also unbelievable. But we’re not talking incredible, amazing or extraordinary, more that this ‘gentleman’ should simply never be allowed any contact with any customer – ever!
Having tainted the brand immediately for me, with his catastrophic failure to impress, it dawned on me to ask if it is possible to teach someone to deliver great customer service.
One key to answering the question is to define great customer service and so immediately we have a challenge. A customer’s perception of great customer service is dependent on many factors including, but not limited to:
• The mood of the customer
• The mood of the team member
• The quality of the product or service
• The first impression of the product or service
• Who the customer is with
• Who the team member is with
Suffice it to say that delivering consistently good customer service is no easy task and therefore any training is also not going to be simple, especially where the person lacks the natural gift.
Here’s another key - what is this natural gift? It is best described as “Emotional Intelligence”. In his book, Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman defines it as ‘the capacity for recognising our own feelings and those of others for motivating ourselves and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships’.
Stand out from the crowd!
There are five main aspects of emotional intelligence including self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, social skills and empathy. The most important of these is empathy. That’s the skill you use when you walk in the front door and yell “Hi, I’m home!” It’s the way your partner says “Hi”, tells you if they had a good or bad day, if they are feeling happy or sad. You intuitively know their mood.
Think about your worst customer service experience and I guarantee that at the core of the issue was a lack of empathy. Trying to get good service or recover a bad situation is impossible if the person with whom you are dealing simply doesn’t care!
We all know people who have a natural gift of emotional intelligence, but can it be taught? My view is that we all have a greater or lesser degree of emotional intelligence – it is part of our make-up, and after all, we all have emotions. With the right kind of training, delivered by the right trainer (one who demonstrates emotional intelligence!), these skills can be improved but only if there is clarity about the size of the task.
Delivering great customer service involves the attitude of the team member. A forced smile and a “Can I help you?” through gritted teeth will fool no-one. Customers measure the quality of the service by how they are made to feel. If you are asking someone to change so that it fits in with his or her customer-facing role job description, then you are asking them to change their personality and attitude. Impossible? No. Extremely difficult and time consuming? You bet!
I would suggest that it is much better to spend more time concentrating on finding the people who already possess empathy, great attitude and enthusiasm (the gifts) and get them to work for you. Make it central to your recruitment process by actively identifying an interviewer equipped with enough emotional intelligence to recognise it in others, because those qualities are, without doubt, central to your customer’s purchasing decision.
Related links
Click here to access the Institute of Hospitality's Online Library Catalogue for more free reading from authors specialising in emotional intelligence. Login using your membership details and search the Online Library Catalogue by author, title, date or key words. Here are some of the titles available exclusively to members:
- Coaching for emotional intelligence : the secret to developing the star potential in your employees / Wall, Bob Lee (2007)
- Quick emotional intelligence activities for busy managers : 50 team exercises that get results in just 15 minutes / Lynn, Adele B (2007)
- The emotionally intelligent workplace : how to select for, measure, and improve emotional intelligence in individuals, groups, and organizations / Cherniss, Cary (2001)
Comment on "Can you teach a new dog old tricks?"
Subscribe in a reader
