ServiceFriday: Employee Emotional Competence as a Critical Value-Driver for Customers
While service managers understand the importance of frontline service employees possessing emotional intelligence (EI), a study authored by Cécile Delcourt, CSL Faculty Network member Dwayne Gremler, et. al, in the Journal of Service Research found that it is in fact more critical that employees possess something called emotional competency (EEC).
In the study, the researchers note that given how service encounters are often highly emotionally charged, employee emotional competence is essential. “Customers often experience intense emotions during service encounters. Their perceptions of how well contact employees demonstrate emotional competence in emotionally charged service encounters can affect their service evaluations and loyalty intentions.”
The researchers were able to define emotional competence as, “The employee demonstrated ability to perceive, understand, and regulate customer emotions in a service encounter to create and maintain an appropriate climate for service. Because the EEC construct is formative, all three dimensions of EEC are crucial in service encounters if employees want to be perceived as emotionally competent by customers. Furthermore, we find that EEC differs conceptually and empirically from other related concepts such as empathy, assurance, affectivity, and EI.”
Based on this research, an instrument was developed in order to help managers precisely understand the differences between EEC and related concepts to better manage emotionally charged service encounters, as well as to select and train employees based on their EEC. “The precise diagnostic of EEC at the dimensional level is critical for helping managers make appropriate decisions about employee development (e.g., investing in training to improve employee competence in regulating customer emotions rather than in perceiving customer emotions).”
This tool can be used to operationalize EEC within a service encounter context, therefore improving the overall customer service encounter experience. “Our instrument better equips service managers to manage emotionally charged service encounters. In this sense, our measure of EEC contributes to managerial practice in at least two ways. It enables managers to (1) observe, assess, and determine the impact of EEC on outcomes of interest in service encounters and (2) select and train employees based on their EC.”
To access the full article, visit the Journal of Service Research at Sage Journals at this link: https://bit.ly/2VGXEXP (A fee may apply.)